Korea, Are You at Peace? Tales of Two Women Travelers in a Troubled Land

Here’s a blurb about a book just submitted to the publisher. It should be out in another two or three months.

You might not think a modern woman scientist and a Victorian travel writer would have much in common. Yet in this travel memoir, I find myself channeling Isabella Bird Bishop, a nineteenth century adventuress, who visited some of the same Korean countryside I did a century later. The Korea I visited was no longer her mysterious Hermit Kingdom of Asia but rather a divided and dangerous world. During the century between our visits, Korea was abandoned by China, deceived by Russia (and by the U.K. and U.S.), annexed by Japan, and finally ‘liberated’ by the USSR and the U.N. Subsequently, the peninsula was subjected to a devastating three year war and further fractured by Cold War ideology. The Korean War, in fact, never officially ended.

This peninsula has recently emerged onto the world stage as both an economic success story (South Korea) and an ideological, political nightmare (North Korea). Korea, Are You at Peace? is the personal story of a Western woman living in the East, observing and trying to understand twenty-first century Korea and its culture, as viewed against a historical backdrop provided by a late-nineteenth century woman travel writer. Insights of others who chronicled the devastating twentieth century in Korea are included in the narrative.

Korea, Are You at Peace recounts my experiences as a teacher and U.S. military contractor, living, working, and traveling for two years in South Korea. I came to admire the courage and endurance of the Korean people, but it was impossible not to sense their pain and anger, nor to marvel at their extraordinary energy and resilience. Several intentions underlie my desire to make these experiences public.

• To provide a brief, readable history of Korea, with the hope that Americans may better understand the country—its past and its people.
• To compare Korea, the reclusive Hermit Kingdom of Asia at the turn of the 20th century, with a radically altered Korea at the turn of the 21st century—a divided peninsula and political tinderbox.
• To describe what it is like to be an American military contractor in a foreign land and to offer insight into the cultural discord engendered by an American military presence on a local foreign population.
• To narrate the often humorous challenges of a Western woman traveling alone in East Asia.

For a concise, accurate, and sympathetic history of the Korean peninsula, read the Appendix of this book. For an engaging narrative of Korea and its past century, read the whole book.

On Being a Woman – Violence and Alcohol

Congress finally passed (or should I say, reaffirmed) the Violence Against Women Act. Apparently, what was holding up the legislation was the issue of Native American women. Do the federal government and its law enforcement agencies have jurisdiction on autonomous Indian reservations? It seems that, with the high level of alcohol consumption on reservations, the incidence of violence against women is very high, and some “bleeding heart liberals” wanted to include those women under the umbrella of American women being protected by the law, which requires rapid intervention in cases of domestic abuse and stiffer penalties for abusers.
In response to a comment I made on a public website a couple of weeks ago, some joker claimed that, if the ERA had been passed, then the Violence Against Women Act would be unconstitutional, because it would be discriminatory. (Would this be against men?) O.K., I’ll admit, SOME men are abused by women. Remember Lorena Babbitt? But wasn’t that a reaction to repeated marital rape? And yes, women sometimes kill abusive husbands or lovers.
However, the vast majority of violence is perpetrated by stronger males against weaker females. Is the fact that women are generally weaker than men some form of natural discrimination? Perhaps so, and there may be evolutionary, biological reasons for it. But then, children are weaker than adults, and we definitely have laws against child abuse. In fact, we have established a whole social and governmental network, however inadequate, to try to assure that children are not permanently maimed by their elders or reduced to such a marginal state psychologically that they cannot function independently in society.
The truth is that wife-beating is a “normal” occurrence in many cultures around the world, as it was in the U.S. until women were “liberated” in the early twentieth century. Just as once child-beating (“spare the rod and spoil the child”) and slave-beating were considered normal and necessary to ensure obedience. Beating may yield temporary obedience, but it also leads to long-term resentment, even hatred.

Carrie Nation, Kansas Historical Society
Alcohol has always been a factor in unleashing abuse. Indeed, it was the early feminists of the mid-nineteenth century who, along with some preachers, started the movement for prohibition of the sale of alcohol. Far too many American men were going to men-only bars, drinking up all their weekly earnings, and then coming home to beat wives and children, leaving them with no money for food. During Prohibition, although “liquor” never disappeared from the market, it was much harder to come by, and the lot of American women (and children) improved.
Moreover, the speakeasies of the Prohibition era were gender-integrated, and when Prohibition ended, women were also allowed into the newly opened public bars, tempering the excessive male drinking. Thus, after Prohibition, the per-person alcohol consumption never reached its prior level. So Prohibition did some good, and improved the lives of women on the national social scene. This good was, to some extent, counteracted by the creation of a national organized crime structure (“The Mafia”) as well as an increase in alcoholism among women.
How does alcohol promote violence? Very simply, alcohol damages the brain, most particularly, the prefrontal cortex, which serves our conscience, and our concern for others. Without that part of the brain functioning properly, we give way to impulses and animal reactions buried deeper in the brain, which are less complex, and less susceptible to scrambling by alcohol and other drugs.
The health-care pundits recommend (red) wine for cardiovascular health – one glass if you’re female or two if you’re male. O.K. Any more than that and someone is likely to get hurt.

On Being a Woman: Abortion – Should Men Have a Say? Part 2

This is the continuation and final installment of the previous blog on human development and who should determine whether or not that process is interrupted. Below is an image of the developmental stages to date from http://embryo.soad.umich.edu/

After about three months of development, the embryo has acquired most of the physical characteristics of a human being, and from then on it is referred to as a fetus. However, the brain is still very poorly developed, and will continue to develop and change, with a great many new cells added, and many connections between cells made or pruned back. Initially the brain is rather reptilian in structure, but eventually the cerebral cortex undergoes rapid expansion and folding and the brain becomes more human in structure and function. During this period of development, anything the mother eats or drinks, especially alcohol or drugs, can damage brain cells or alter the way they’re connected. This goes for exposure to environmental toxins, as well, including pesticides, heavy metals, and many types of plastic residues.

The last four or five months of pregnancy are usually easier on the mother; her body has accommodated to the foreign body within, but she will continue to lose calcium from her bones, and after two or three pregnancies, she will be well on her way to osteoporosis. Moreover, in the last half of pregnancy, ligaments in the hips and other joints start to loosen, increasing the difficulty of walking, and paving the way for future arthritis. Moreover, as the fetus becomes larger, its weight presses against the veins of the lower abdomen and slows blood flow in veins of the legs, resulting in varicose veins that are often permanent, leaving the mother at risk for future blood clots that can cause problems in the lungs or brain.

Birth, itself, is a tricky and dangerous process, and one that was often fatal to both mother and infant in the past. So, too, were diseases of early childhood. The brain continues to develop after birth, but very few people remember events in their lives before the age of three. This is because the brain has not completed its growth (in size) until around age four. Moreover, language acquisition is mmarginal in infants and toddlers; this limits substantially limits cognitive processes. The brain will, of course, continue to develop after the age of four, and the nature of its growth, the connections formed, the learning acquired, the value systems developed, all result from an interaction of the brain structure and the environment to which a person is exposed, beginning at birth and continuing throughout a lifetime.

So it’s pretty hard to assert that a developing organism within a womb is a separate human being until it is born and begins to form its own individual experiences of the world. Since men have no existential understanding of what it’s like to be pregnant, a man should not have any say on the issue of whether or not a woman has an abortion unless he is married to the pregnant woman and intends to offer financial and emotional support after the birth. Likewise, a woman should have no say on whether or not a man uses Viagra, unless she is his intimate partner.

From an evolutionary perspective, it makes sense for men to try to control women’s bodies; in this way a man can ensure that his genes – and not the genes of some other man – are passed on to future generations through the body of the woman (women) with whom he mates. However, in this day and age, if men had to carry a baby within their bodies for nearly a year, if they suffered the nausea, the burden, and the backaches, most would be silent on this subject.

My friends and relatives who have had abortions (two before and two after Roe v. Wade) chose the procedure because they thought their lives would be ruined if they carried to term. A baby would have drastically limited their future, and they would have had no way to care for a child in their circumstances at the time.

Personally, I would not voluntarily have had an abortion. I was lucky never to be in a situation where I needed one. I once went with a man who wanted me to agree that, if I got pregnant, I would have an abortion. I refused to agree. I told him that, if I became pregnant, I would leave him before I would have an abortion. Fortunately, that choice never came up; my birth-control method worked, and we parted, childless, after nearly two years of being together. Indeed, it’s clear that the best way to limit abortions is to make inexpensive birth-control widely available to both women and men.

A blog post written back in 2011–when teapartiers nearly shut down the government over the abortion issue– expresses  my frustration with those who proclaim that any pregnancy is ”God’s Will.”

On Being a Woman: Abortion – Should Men Have a Say? Part 1

Yesterday, I responded to a blog post on “Why Men Can Speak on Abortion.” with: “This article is simply a rehashing of age-old arguments about why males should control women and their bodies. The fetus is part of a woman’s body until it’s born.” I received a couple of stinging replies, which suggested to me that those respondents didn’t understand much about human biology.

So I thought I’d offer an overview of what happens after fertilization in the normal course of embryonic and fetal development, in order to put the biological dimension of the abortion issue into perspective. It also seemed like it might work as a blog on this site as well. This version is more detailed than that response and I may have to split it into two segments. Again. Sorry for the wordiness!

Human embryonic development is a long, slow process, fraught with danger for both the developing embryo/fetus and for the mother who carries it. Until the advent of contemporary medicine, many women died during pregnancy or in childbirth – approximately one woman for every six births. The death toll among embryos and fetuses was, and still is, even higher, between 30% and 50%. Most are spontaneously aborted because they are not viable for a variety of reasons, including genetic abnormalities, improper implantation, developmental mishaps, hormonal imbalances in either mother or fetus, and environmental toxins to which the woman has been exposed. These natural accidents cause things to go awry; it’s truly amazing that anyone is born normal.

Things start out with a fertilized ovum. The ovum is produced in the woman’s body, and the fertilizing sperm is thrust into it from outside. The union of an ovum and a sperm is called a zygote; the term conceptus is also used for the product of the union of ovum and sperm and the very earliest period of development.

The ovum provides all nutrients necessary for the first week of development, and it contains the mitochondria that will produce energy for development; thus, the developing organism’s mitochondria will carry only the maternal genes. So Mom’s huge cell is carrying the load here; it offers nutritional molecules and energy production. The itty bitty sperm simply provides some DNA. A great many new cells are produced by cell division following fertilization, until the resulting conceptus is a microscopic ball of cells that looks rather like a Volvox.

After several days to a week, the ball of cells implants in the uterus, and begins to burrow in, developing membranes that are designed to suck nutrients from the mother’s blood supply like a parasite. After the placental membranes have been established, only then does the embryo, itself, begin to develop. During those first two weeks of development, the vast majority of the cells produced will become embryonic membranes. (Would the placenta be considered a human being? Should we keep it alive after birth? Should we develop vast warehouses to nourish old placentas because they were once part of a conceptus. Should we bury them and give them gravestones?)

As an embryo begins to develop, it takes on a variety of shapes, undergoing a metamorphosis from a worm-like creature, to a fish-like creature with gills, to a quasi-human creature with a tail, holes in its heart, and webbed hands and feet. The embryo will remain attached to the mother’s uterine lining during the remainder of development. It will absorb nutrients from the mother’s blood and will slough some of its own cells into the mother’s blood stream.

Some of the sloughed embryonic cells can lodge in organs throughout the mother’s body, and they may continue to live and even divide outside the womb. These parasitic remnants may give the mother trouble in years to come in the form of “autoimmune” diseases, from which women suffer at a much higher rate than men.

The early months of pregnancy are usually difficult for the mother, who often suffers from nausea and vomiting, enormous fatigue, and general malaise. Her body must accommodate to a foreign body growing rapidly inside her like a tumor, diverting her blood supply to its purposes and absorbing a large share of the nutrients she digests.

(to be continued…)

The Next Big Thing – Women Bloggers

This blog post will be a departure from the usual recent rants about women and culture. Rather, I’ve agreed to participate in a blog hop (“The Next Big Thing”), during which I’ll introduce you to some terrific women who are out there in the blogosphere.

I was recruited by Julie Frayn, who blogs at:  http://juliebird.ca/

Her facebook page is:  https://www.facebook.com/Woodglob/posts/566390143375159?comment_id=7147059#!/JulesFrayn?fref=ts

Not only is Julie witty and wise, but she also has a keen eye and ear for writing, including the grammatical foibles of American vernacular.

What I’m supposed to do is to tell something about myself and my writing by answering ten questions. Then I’ll introduce you to a few other great bloggers I‘ve been following.

1. What is the working title of your next book?

Korea, Are You at Peace: A Traveler’s History of a Divided Country

2. Where did the idea for this book come from?

After I returned to the U.S. from a two-year stay in Korea, I felt compelled to write up the adventures and insights of that experience.

3. What is the genre of your book?

This is a nonfiction travel narrative.

4. Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

I don’t think my book would work well in movie rendition.

5. What is a one-sentence synopsis of your book?

A mature Western woman spends two years in South Korea and compares her experiences with those of Isabella Bird Bishop, a Victorian travel writer, as a way of exploring the dark century of that erstwhile Hermit Kingdom and its emergence into a brighter contemporary world, although still occupied by American military and under the cloud of North Korea’s irrational leadership.

6. Is your book self-published, published by an independent publisher, or represented by an agency?

I hope to publish through a mainstream publisher. I do not have an agent at this time.

A previous book was self-published (CreateSpace), also a nonfiction book on religious philosophy, available on Amazon at: http://www.amazon.com/God-that-Says-Scientists-Meditations/dp/1450549047/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1286802360&sr=1-2

That book is biomedical scientist’s existential exploration of the nature of spiritual experience and examines the function of religion in human culture. I have recently begun a blog on this theme at:  http://spiritandscience.net/

7. How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

The first draft took about a year to write. It has been undergoing revision for the past four or five years.

8. What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

The closest I can come is Korea: A Walk Through the Land of Miracles, by Simon Winchester. He uses the itinerary of seamen captured after the seventeenth wreckage of a Dutch ship to plot his contemporary walking tour through South Korea.

9. Who or what inspired you to write this book?

I was inspired by the Korean people and the Korean countryside. I was also inspired by Isabella Bird Bishop, a brave British woman, the first to explore the Korean backcountry. She narrated her travels in the book: Korea and Her Neighbors.

10. What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

Readers will like the photos illustrating all chapters, the chapter on the DMV, chapters on Korean women and Korean religions, as well as an appendix on Korean history.

Now, I would like to nominate a few other women bloggers who inspire me to continue writing.

The Single Cell: http://thesinglecell.wordpress.com/  who writes beautifully, as well as humorously and insightfully.

Tori, who blogs at The Ramblings, at http://torinelson.wordpress.com/ and writes vividly, with humor, and with a deep soft spot.

Lisa, who blogs at Woman Wielding Words, at http://lisawieldswords.wordpress.com/  and is deeply introspective, honestly sharing her doubts and concerns.

Desi, who blogs at: http://thevalentine4.com/ and is a spellbinding writer.

On Being a Woman – Valued, Part 2

This is the second (concluding) segment of the blog on women’s value. The first segment can be read here.

But is it just monetary value that women are lacking? Maybe it’s also personal value – not being taken seriously for their immense contributions to human history and culture. Simply caring for and educating children throughout history has been a cultural contribution beyond value and one that is seldom honored. O.K., so there’s Mother’s Day. Once a year. Thanks!

It’s almost as if women’s work, women’s contribution to the long-term well-being of humanity, is simply taken for granted, like the water we drink or the air we breathe. Economically, those are called “externalities” and are not accorded monetary value. David Suzuki has something to say about externalities that we all need to consider. What would happen if we lost them?  https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Se55CCdfaOA

Are we women complicit in our own undervaluing? Are we too willing, too compliant, too eager to please, too afraid of power? Have we, perhaps unconsciously, internalized the view of sex-object and second-class citizenship that pervades our culture? Why do we have to “dress for success”? Why do we worry about our hair? Why do we pile on make-up, even though some of the ingredients may be toxic? Why do we feel we have to get a “face job” after the age of fifty? Why do we worry about our figures? Why are we slaves to fashion? Why do women work in those foot-destroying high heels – the  American version of Chinese foot-binding. If their feet are incapacitated, woman can’t run very fast or very far.

Just look at those balding, frizzy-haired, flabby, wrinkled old guys who are making lots of money or are making decisions that affect our lives. Look at the spikey-haired, cross-eyed, blobby-nosed young guys who are delivering the daily news or are trading on Wall Street. Who criticizes them for their looks? Who accuses them of having had a face-job? O.K., an ugly-making job.

It may be possible for a woman – eventually, and after great effort and accomplishment – to be accorded some grudging respect. I sometimes drink from a cup engraved with the quotation: “Anything women do, they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily this is not difficult.” (Quote from Mayor Charlotte Whitten, Ottawa, Canada).

Anything women do…

On Being a Woman – Valued, Part 1

As so often happens, when I start to write on a topic, it goes over the 300 word “limit” on blogs (reader attention limit), so I’m splitting this one up into two parts. Here’s Part 1.

______________________

One of the most frustrating aspects of Being a Women is simply not being valued – not being taken seriously – almost no matter what one does. (Possible exception: behaving like a sex-object.) Whatever public activity women try to perform – academics, politics, business, writing, athletics – someone out there–most often, many–will belittle the efforts and disparage the achievements.

The undervaluing of a female’s contribution to the human enterprise is reflected in her monetary compensation. Unfortunately, in our society, value is commonly measured by income and/or price. This is true whether evaluating a person or a thing, and is no doubt a consequence of the mercantile culture that dominates much of the “civilized” world.

Despite laws to the contrary, on the books since the 1960s, women are simply not paid as much, on average, as men doing the same or comparable jobs. AAUW recently put out a 64 page report on the gender gap, which you can read here. If you don’t want to spend a lot of time perusing that lengthy document, you can read a report that provides a more succinct overview of the issues.

These pay gaps (really value gaps) persist, although they have diminished in the past quarter century (since the ERA went down in ignominious defeat). Even in science, where I spent my career (and retired at a salary in the 10^th percentile, despite more publications and teaching responsibilities than most of my colleagues), women are almost unconsciously undervalued by both men AND women. Indeed, when publishing scientific articles, I learned that manuscripts submitted with just initials (J. A. V. Simson), rather than with my full name, were given more credence by reviewers. I had hoped this was no longer the case, but it seems not to have changed much, as can be seen in this report.

And speaking of the ERA, check out this YouTube video! http://www.wearewoman.us/2012/11/do-you-have-rights.html

Moreover, women political leaders and female cultural contributors tend to be mocked or ignored, and they so often fade from history. Where are the women in the history books and the art museums? Oh sure, we can’t forget Elizabeth I or Queen Victoria or Catherine the Great, can we? (Or can we? What do you know about their reigns?) And what about Joan of Arc, who was betrayed and conveniently burned at the stake after she had accomplished what the cowardly Charles VII could not/would not do. How much contempt has been hurled at female leaders such as Margaret Thatcher or Nancy Pelosi or Hillary Clinton? Their hats? Their hair-do’s? Please. Was any world leader uglier than Winston Churchill? Don’t get me wrong, I’m a great admirer of Churchill, AND of the aforementioned women.

Joan of Arc Triumphant.

Joan of Arc, Rewarded

Women in the arts generally receive little honor or monetary reward. Where is the wall-space given to women artists? Occasionally works by a female artist like Berthe Morisot or Mary Cassatt will be displayed alongside other, more famous male Impressionists. Granted, in the literary arts, women have achieved some true renown – writers like Jane Austin, Louisa Mae Alcott, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Virginia Woolf have reached iconic status. Still, these authors are read primarily by women, who seem to appreciate books by both men and women. It seems that men, however, prefer books by men. This was illustrated by a recent blog in the online site, SheWrites.

(to be continued)