Musings while walking to the post

As I walk to the post, I pass grape vines freed from their fruit, a field plowed and ready for the next year’s seed. I smell fresh mown hay still in clumps that will be rolled into cylinders.

A Muslim women, veiled from her head to toe but with her face showing walks by pushing a baby carriage with a bonny, smiling infant. We smile as we exchange bonjours. Her accent is better than mine.

I think of the brouhaha created by Jack Straw who said he could communicate better with women constituents when they weren’t veiled. I think of the put downs on the choices made by Muslim women. I have talked to some and listen to their reasons for the scarf, the veil, full hijab. Agreeing with them is not required. Appreciating their point of view is. I hope I do. I’ve tried.

Still as a western woman, a feminist, part of me will not let go of the idea that women should not need to protect themselves from men’s eyes. That implies men are weak, stupid, etc. Equally I am annoyed the morality is usually synonymous with sexuality.

My sexuality is my own: it is not my father’s, brother’s, lover’s. What I do with it is my choice, although I may decide to enter into agreements of fidelity and if I break those agreements, then my morality is in question.

At this point in my thoughts I have reached the blueberry bushes and my thoughts drift to other questions of morality.

People can get hysterical over Bill Clinton’s or Mark Foley’s sex life (although if it brings new faces into Congress, there's an upside). They are quiet about the immorality of the 650,000+ estimated dead Iraqis and the almost 3000 dead American troops -- all for a lie. They don’t scream about the morality for our bought and paid for Congress by corporate America who put power before their constituents and play with the lives of the citizens of America. They say nothing about the morality of the war profiteers who have stolen American money in Iraq but worry that a gay couple might marry.

Maybe it has to do with something I witnessed as a cub reporter where a New England town meeting voted a multi-million school construction budget without a peep and argued for hours about a $300 town decoration scheme. Small things can be understood more easily than big. $300 is understandable, millions aren’t.

I have reached the post. I chat in French with the people in line. It is a friendly village. An aristocratic woman, her silver hair in a bun, her black dress on a body that most women would die for, says “Have a good day,” to me in heavily accented English.

“You too,” I say and turn to the older man in front of me. “Funny no one thinks my accent is Swiss.”

He and his buddy laugh. They are probably about my age. “Maybe it is Vaudoise, not Genevoise.” We don’t discuss morality.