Dear friends, family, fellow travelers,
Three years ago -- during a hard, hard season in which we had to move, our beloved Geraldine died, and the slow-motion (and still-unfolding) disaster that is the Trump administration took political power -- I boarded and airplane at Logan and flew to Minneapolis for a long-planned in-person visit with a dear friend (whom I had met feminist blogging in grad school), their partner, two children, and recently-adopted pupper.
Image: Two views of Minneapolis pupper Kit who loves -- LOVES to sit on laps.
That trip was a deeply healing visit in a lot of ways. Spring was unfolding in the Upper Midwest. Their unschooling home life was both uniquely their own and familiar in its rhythms from my own Midwestern childhood. The food was delicious. The company divine. It was a homecoming to the region of my childhood with none of the personal crud that gets wrapped up in going back to your own hometown. It also reminded me when I desperately needed to be reminded that progressive politics have always been present in America's "heartland" alongside, and in resistance to, the reactionary politics that brought the GOP to power. I returned again last year. And this weekend, for the third year. It's becoming a spring ritual to spend my Memorial Day weekend in the Twin cities and I look forward to many more annual visits in the years to come.
Image: Cover of the forthcoming book God Land by Lyz Lenz.
This year, I took two review books with me: Lyz Lenz's forthcoming God Land: A Story of Faith, Loss, and Renewal in Middle America (Indiana University Press, August 2019) and Kate Bowler's The Preacher's Wife: The Precarious Power of Evangelical Women Celebrities (Princeton University Press, October 2019). God Land was a particularly painful read for me, though I never experienced the full immersion in conservative evangelical Protestantism that Lenz describes. Her descriptions still resonated. The elliptical arguments with Church leadership about female "submission." The microaggressions experienced as a feminist in anti-feminist spaces. The endless decisions about which battles are worth fighting (and which battles must be waged because capitulating would be an annihilation of the self). The inconvenient truth that queer, black and brown, feminist, progressive people live in Middle America and yet rarely occupy the halls of power. The Northeast is no panacea, but to vocabulary of our struggles is different. There's something unique and hard about reading and remembering how you didn't fit in the landscape of your childhood.
I also highly recommend Bowler's book, as well, for people interested in thinking about how conservative women negotiate the constrained power allowed them in the context of a patriarchal faith. I hadn't previously considered how useful it is to think about evangelical Christian megaministry as a culture of celebrity (though of course that's what it has always been).
Image: A collage of double-pointed needles holding brioche knitting and the pattern for a brioche hat.
While in Minneapolis I learned brioche stitch under the tutelage of my friend Molly. We went to this wonderful wool shop in St. Paul, The Yarnery, and I picked up two contrasting colors of Malabrigo wool so that I could try my hand at two-color brioche. I know this was the hot thing everyone got excited about a few years ago and now is probably passe, but it's a lovely soft stitch and it's nice to have some knitting on the needles again -- you know, just to balance out the quilting and cross stitch and embroidery projects I also have in progess.
Last night, Persistent Stitches reached $2,100.50 raised so far this year! I won't be sending out our second quarter update until July but in the first five months of this year our crafters have made 135 items and sent them to 39 donors who live in 20 states in the U.S. and 2 countries outside the U.S. We are well on our way to hitting 50% ($3k) of our fundraising goal for the year by the 4th of July! Huge thanks to everyone who has crafted, donated, or otherwise contributed to this project to-date.
Image: Exhibition intern Rachael Barrett, librarian Peter Drummey, and me at the exhibition opening.
Image: Exhibition guest curator Dr. Allison Lange and me, at the exhibition opening.
And before I sign off, our exhibition "Can She Do It? Massachusetts Debates a Woman's Right to Vote" opened on April 25th with a preview reception (above). While you can't tour the exhibition virtually, you can check out my companion Object of the Month piece, an unpublished essay by journalist Margaret B. Upham Wright (1839-1919) championing America's ambitious women who "go and take" their rights, "not satisfied with only the humbler places railway signal-women, railway ticketsellers, book-keepers, type-writers and restaurant cashiers." I imagine Wright might have found much to admire in megaministry's celebrity wives.
Now, on to the month of Pride! Speaking of which, I have to sign off and get some exhibition labels written for our pop-up exhibit for Boston Pride next week...
In friendship,
Anna
Three years ago -- during a hard, hard season in which we had to move, our beloved Geraldine died, and the slow-motion (and still-unfolding) disaster that is the Trump administration took political power -- I boarded and airplane at Logan and flew to Minneapolis for a long-planned in-person visit with a dear friend (whom I had met feminist blogging in grad school), their partner, two children, and recently-adopted pupper.
Image: Two views of Minneapolis pupper Kit who loves -- LOVES to sit on laps.That trip was a deeply healing visit in a lot of ways. Spring was unfolding in the Upper Midwest. Their unschooling home life was both uniquely their own and familiar in its rhythms from my own Midwestern childhood. The food was delicious. The company divine. It was a homecoming to the region of my childhood with none of the personal crud that gets wrapped up in going back to your own hometown. It also reminded me when I desperately needed to be reminded that progressive politics have always been present in America's "heartland" alongside, and in resistance to, the reactionary politics that brought the GOP to power. I returned again last year. And this weekend, for the third year. It's becoming a spring ritual to spend my Memorial Day weekend in the Twin cities and I look forward to many more annual visits in the years to come.
Image: Cover of the forthcoming book God Land by Lyz Lenz.This year, I took two review books with me: Lyz Lenz's forthcoming God Land: A Story of Faith, Loss, and Renewal in Middle America (Indiana University Press, August 2019) and Kate Bowler's The Preacher's Wife: The Precarious Power of Evangelical Women Celebrities (Princeton University Press, October 2019). God Land was a particularly painful read for me, though I never experienced the full immersion in conservative evangelical Protestantism that Lenz describes. Her descriptions still resonated. The elliptical arguments with Church leadership about female "submission." The microaggressions experienced as a feminist in anti-feminist spaces. The endless decisions about which battles are worth fighting (and which battles must be waged because capitulating would be an annihilation of the self). The inconvenient truth that queer, black and brown, feminist, progressive people live in Middle America and yet rarely occupy the halls of power. The Northeast is no panacea, but to vocabulary of our struggles is different. There's something unique and hard about reading and remembering how you didn't fit in the landscape of your childhood.
I also highly recommend Bowler's book, as well, for people interested in thinking about how conservative women negotiate the constrained power allowed them in the context of a patriarchal faith. I hadn't previously considered how useful it is to think about evangelical Christian megaministry as a culture of celebrity (though of course that's what it has always been).
Image: A collage of double-pointed needles holding brioche knitting and the pattern for a brioche hat.While in Minneapolis I learned brioche stitch under the tutelage of my friend Molly. We went to this wonderful wool shop in St. Paul, The Yarnery, and I picked up two contrasting colors of Malabrigo wool so that I could try my hand at two-color brioche. I know this was the hot thing everyone got excited about a few years ago and now is probably passe, but it's a lovely soft stitch and it's nice to have some knitting on the needles again -- you know, just to balance out the quilting and cross stitch and embroidery projects I also have in progess.
Last night, Persistent Stitches reached $2,100.50 raised so far this year! I won't be sending out our second quarter update until July but in the first five months of this year our crafters have made 135 items and sent them to 39 donors who live in 20 states in the U.S. and 2 countries outside the U.S. We are well on our way to hitting 50% ($3k) of our fundraising goal for the year by the 4th of July! Huge thanks to everyone who has crafted, donated, or otherwise contributed to this project to-date.
Image: Exhibition intern Rachael Barrett, librarian Peter Drummey, and me at the exhibition opening.Image: Exhibition guest curator Dr. Allison Lange and me, at the exhibition opening. And before I sign off, our exhibition "Can She Do It? Massachusetts Debates a Woman's Right to Vote" opened on April 25th with a preview reception (above). While you can't tour the exhibition virtually, you can check out my companion Object of the Month piece, an unpublished essay by journalist Margaret B. Upham Wright (1839-1919) championing America's ambitious women who "go and take" their rights, "not satisfied with only the humbler places railway signal-women, railway ticketsellers, book-keepers, type-writers and restaurant cashiers." I imagine Wright might have found much to admire in megaministry's celebrity wives.
Now, on to the month of Pride! Speaking of which, I have to sign off and get some exhibition labels written for our pop-up exhibit for Boston Pride next week...
In friendship,
Anna