#women Archives

Leftover victims of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic

On May 8, 2020, the U.S. Department of Labor issued its monthly employment report, which showed that the national unemployment rate jumped to 14.7% in April, its highest level since the Great Depression of the 1930s; it said that 20.5 million people had suddenly lost their jobs due to the country’s lockdown, erasing a sustained rise of employment of the past ten years. A more detailed analysis of those that are abruptly working part-time instead of full-time and those that are not counted showed that the unemployment rate might even be higher. Moreover, the tightening of the federal, state and county budgets will inevitably furlough many more people.

In the previous recession of 2007-2009, the majority of lost jobs belonged to men, as the construction and manufacturing sectors ground to a halt; but this time the real losers are often women as thousands upon thousands of their positions as clerks, secretaries, hairdressers, health care aides, travel consultants, stewardesses, airplane and ship chandlers, restaurant servers and cashiers, dry cleaning employees, etc., evaporate. Once the lockdown is finally levied, albeit in various progressive stages according to the local public health characteristics, many of the once thriving small businesses that used to predominantly employ women will be gone. And there will be hardly any credit for entrepreneurial initiatives as the banks will be reluctant to lend.

Not only did women hold most of the positions offered in the Education and Health Care realms—the hardest hit sectors—but they were also furloughed in greater numbers than men. In a Washington Post article, Heather Long and Andrew Van Dam said: “Before the pandemic, women held 77%of the jobs in education and health services, but they account for 83% of the jobs lost in those sectors…Women made up less than half of the retail trade workforce, but they experienced 61% of the retail job losses. Many of these women held some of the lowest-paid jobs.” A large proportion of those workers are single women with children and members of the Latino and Black minority groups.

These disadvantaged single women usually lack a strong social or family support, for which they disproportionately rely on their children’s school services for their care, instruction, and meals. If they cannot take their kids to school, they will not be able to resume their previous positions, even if they are asked back to work.

In order to re-start our economies we must first help the women that sustain it.

Stay distant. Stay safe. Stay beautiful.

What do you think? Please tell us.

Don’t leave me alone.

Supernatural, Superstition and She

What is the significance of Number 17?

When we first arrived in the USA, we were surprised by the importance many people gave to the number 13 (thirteen) as a harbinger of bad luck—to be totally avoided. Only later did we learn its origins in the tragic demise of the Knights Templars in the Middle Ages, which we described in a previous article of this novel series. One of the reasons why it did not ring any bells in our conscience is that we did not have that family or cultural imprint in our memory, except for a vague recollection from the printed media.

For the Italians—and henceforth their descendants, us, the Italian Americans—the real dangerous number is 17 (seventeen) for reasons that were initially rather cryptic. We always took it as a given, accepting it as part of our cultural heritage. As a result, we never had any calms in using seat 13, or having an office in an address with 13. For all those that were watching our cavalier attitude towards that number, the certitude that we were not “superstitious” was applauded as a most rational attitude. That was a most specious assessment of our true state of mind as they had been hoodwinked by our camouflaged allegiance to a much, much more ancient belief from our ancestors.

The Romans were firm believers in multiple ceremonies presided by socially-sanctioned augurs that studied the flight of birds and the droppings of chickens to discern events still to come. They also studied the denomination of numbers to find hidden signs to exploit. The Roman denomination of Number 17 is XVII. Priests re-arranged those letters in various combinations, finally finding a similarity with the word VIXIT ( I existed) If we use the Past Tense to identify a status, it implies that the person is already dead. As a result that number was firmly associated with impending harm and even death.

For all its professed Cartesian rationality, our modern society still harbors fears and misgivings that hark back to the Dark Ages and were surreptitiously smuggled into our daily placid routines. Haven’t you noticed that many buildings lack a floor 13? Or that many hotels do not have a floor of suites starting with that fateful number? In a different scale but most noticeably there are countless villages in the Italian peninsula—especially those quaint settlements perched atop the mountains—where you cannot find the number 17 in any of the visible signs of the rustic communities.

Some numerologists claim that Life is all about numbers, good or bad. If we scratch the surface of our sanitized experiences, we might be able to find a significant one. The question is whether we can isolate them with a calm attitude and an open mind.

What do you think? Please tell us.

Don’t leave me alone.

Supernatural, Superstition and She

Why do we need amulets?

When we decided to nail down our butt to our desk chair to write our second book Emotional Frustration – the hushed plaguein a six months-period (we had blogged extensively about those issues for three years and we had a lot of material) we made the firm pledge that we would wear—except for a few circumstances where other kind of garments were needed—the same comfortable grey jersey that we loved. For Hispanics that odd behavior is popularly labelled as “hacer una promesa” (make a promise) and is ingrained in the long Roman Catholic tradition of Latin America.

The use of amulets or talismans has been a millenary tradition of Humankind, almost since the times we dwelt in caves and we saved a saber tooth for happy hunting. The natural amulets are made of many materials like precious stones, metals, teeth and claws of wild animals; the man-made amulets are made of wood, iron, copper, ivory, clay or stone. People that carry amulets believe that they confer special powers due to their connections to natural phenomena, religious identifications or mere luck.

In their lugubrious caves, illuminated only by the flickering light from the burning tip of animal grease of a rustic torch, the Neanderthals used the natural amulets to invoke the auspices of the gods before they went hunting for big mammals and also after they returned with a fatally injured victim of their joint ambush of a mammoth. In Ancient Egypt the scarab beetle was worn by the living and the dead alike as it symbolized life—its hieroglyph was the same as “to become”, enabling resurrection of the mummies. In Middle Ages countless objects that belonged to saintly figures eventually became amulets; their body parts were not spared, as attested by Saint Anthony’s tongue.

Why would supposedly rational individuals believe in these extraordinary powers? We must remember that all our Cerebral Cortex, whose large mass differentiates us from animals that might be able think and imagine at a lower level, is inextricably linked with the Limbic System, seat of the emotional trove that inevitably taints our thoughts. All the sensory and motor stimuli that travel from the periphery to the Central Nervous System must pass through the Thalamus—the sensory waystation of our brains. Just below it, lies the Hypothalamus that regulates mood, sexuality and desires; it responds to external stimuli by sending signals to other limbic structures to elicit responses.

Any rational thought is always “contaminated” by our impressions triggered by various stimuli that we have received in our personal lives or form part of our shared cultures. Most objects will have a rational significance that is thinly coated with such a veneer. When a certain object elicits positive attitudes in our minds, we treasure the stimuli.

What do you think? Please tell us.

Don’t leave me alone.

Testimonials

Happy International Women’s Day

Dear readers and fellow bloggers:

Good morning. We would like to wish all our lady readers a Happy International Women’s day. Not only we owe women our very existence but also the survival of our species in this planet. Life could not exist without their caring affection for all of us.

There is much to be done in order to assure the Equality of Rights for all women in our societies. We hope that our upcoming book “Emotional Frustration – the hushed plague” will contribute its tiny grain of sand to the larger dune of female empowerment. Right this moment we are doing its very last editing before its publication next month.

Thank you very much for existing and taking care of us so diligently. A big kiss.