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Indian House wife

मेरी एक सहेली हाऊस वाईफ है. आज सुबह उसके घर गई तो बच्चों के शोर से घर गूंज रहा था. बोली आज और कल ओवर टाईम करना है ?? मैने पूछा अरे !! कैसे कही ज्वाईन किया क्या तो हंस कर बोली नही री … आज इनकी और बच्चों की छुट्टी है ये सब मस्त है पूरा दिन धमा चौकडी मचाने वाले हैं जबकि उसका आज पूरा दिन रसोई मे बीतेने वाला है … बारी बारी करके सो कर उठेंगें …अलग अलग नाश्ते की फरमाईश होगी फिर बाजार भी शापिंग पर ले जाना होगा फिर बच्चों के दोस्त भी आएगें और इनके भी दो चार दोस्त तो आ ही जाएगें …

मौसम अच्छा है तो पकौडे शकौडे … फिर … मैने कहा … बस बस बस … ओह मैं तो सुनते सुनते ही थक गई इसे तो सारा दिन काम करना है पर वो बोली हां पर खुशी खुशी. एक दो दिन ही हो मिलते हैं बच्चों को मस्ती करने के नही तो सुबह से शाम तक स्कूल पढाई, टयूशन …ना आराम न नींद … !! मैने मुस्कुरा दी.. वाकई छ्ट्टी के दिन तो गृहणी की भूमिका डबल ट्रिपल ही होती है और  ये बात तो एक मां ही सोच सकती है …

मैं अक्सर फेसबुक य अन्य सोश्ल नेट वर्क साईट पर देखती हूं बहुत लोग हैप्पी संडे करके अपना स्टेटस डालते हैं अगर एक हाऊस वाईफ डाले तो …  

खैर !! जरुरी ये बात है हर काम खुशी खुशी किया जाए …कई महिलाए “रुस” जाती है मेरा मतलब मोदी जी की यात्रा वाला रुस नही बल्कि नाराज हो जाती है. इतना काम देख कर मुहं बना लेती है अरे भई   छुटी है  आप भी खुश रहो  इसलिए खूब खाओ और खिलाओ …. !!!!

Indian House wife

Photo by Internet Archive Book Images

The post Indian House wife appeared first on Monica Gupta.

Today would have been Lady Bird Johnson’s 100th birthday. In honor of her and the season, we wanted to share one of Lady Bird’s Christmas recollections, as told to Michael Gillette in Lady Bird Johnson: An Oral History.

ENTERTAINING AT THE RANCH

As the first Christmas at the ranch approached, it was wonderful in a way, but we really hadn’t gotten the house fixed up very much. But we put a wreath on the front gate. We had all the family, and Lyndon assumed the role of paterfamilias. I guess it was just a few days before Christmas that we got everybody out there. Of course, the queen of the occasion—for Lyndon and for me, too—was his mama, but from the remaining children of Lyndon’s father’s siblings, all of those that were still living were there. There were at least three generations there. I think there were twenty-one of us in all. Lyndon sat at the big table that had arrived. All the leaves were put in. We had rolls of pictures made.

Did this family gathering reminded him of earlier ones when he was a youth growing up?

Oh, you know it had to be, and I’m sure that was exactly why he wanted to do it. He remembered all of those, and he wanted to assume the role and gather the clan. I just wish I had done better by it and had had the house all aglow with flowers and fat, comfortable furniture. There was our rather bedraggled-looking Christmas tree, which the children and I actually decorated together. It didn’t profit too much from our inexpert fingers. Then we took pictures by the front door, which had a wreath on it, too. It was a big picture-taking session, and I cherish every one.

My own family came to spend Thanksgiving with us at the ranch in 1953. Daddy and his wife, Ruth; my brother Tommy; and Sarah, his wife. Tony, the one with whom I felt the closet affinity of all, and Matiana. There were our children, sitting down crossed-legged, on the grounds in front of us, in the front yard of the ranch. I’m a little bit too plump, which doesn’t speak well for me. There’s a warmth in looking back and seeing Tommy’s and Tony’s faces, even if it is the occasion of a great big deer hunt and they have their kill propped up in front of them, and in seeing Daddy with his three children by the fi replace. I’m glad they shared this old house with us some.

Michael L. Gillette directed the LBJ Library’s Oral History Program from 1976 to 1991. He later served as director of the Center for Legislative Archives at the National Archives and is currently the executive director of Humanities Texas in Austin. He is the author of Lady Bird Johnson: An Oral History and Launching the War on Poverty: An Oral History.

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Image credit: From the Lady Bird Johnson: An Oral History, Original in the LBJ Library. Public domain.

The post Christmas at the White House appeared first on OUPblog.

Here’s a screenshot of my new painting I’m working on right now. I’m going for a really moody foggy look and have this strong cast of warm light from the street lamp. The shot below is the bare bones of how I start my paintings in PSD. I really don’t have any set “rules” on [...]

I finally finished up the piece for my brother and his wife in honor of their impending twins (who are due in August). Overall I think it came out pretty good. Hopefully they like - at least pretend to like it.

Either way is fine by me really.

Here's a quick update on the piece I'm doing for my brothers impending twins. I spent much of last week in the hospital, so progress has slowed considerably.

Feeling much better though - thanks for asking.

Overall I like how the piece is coming along. There's a lot of work to do though, and they are due to pop out sometime in August.

I need to get my keyster moving.

Steve

So my brother and his wife are going to have twins - twin girls in fact. Instead of buying them a super-expensive gift to celebrate the joyous occasion, I've opted to go the cheapo route and paint them a pretty picture for the nursery.

I'll try to convince them it'll be worth something one day...

It won't.

Anyway, I started on it last night.

It may not look like much at the moment, but I'm liking the early direction and have high hopes.

I'll cross my fingers and you cross yours. Deal?

Steve

Elvin Lim is Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University and author of The Anti-intellectual Presidency, which draws on interviews with more than 40 presidential speechwriters to investigate this relentless qualitative decline, over the course of 200 years, in our presidents’ ability to communicate with the public. He also blogs at www.elvinlim.com. In the article below he reflects on Sarah Palin’s resignation. See his previous OUPblogs here.

People love to hate Sarah Palin. I thought she was trouble on the McCain ticket, trouble for feminism, and trouble for the future of the Republican party, but I am troubled at the feeding frenzy that has continued despite Palin’s express desire and efforts to bow out of the negative politics that has consumed her governorship.

The speculation about what exactly Palin is up to is itself revealing - for it comes attached to one of two possible postulations - neither of which are charitable. Either Palin is up to no good, or she is completely out of her mind. Even in surrender Palin is hounded. Either she is so despicable that post-political-humous hate is both valid and necessary or she is so dangerous that she must be defeated beyond defeat.

Even Governor Mark Sanford got a day or two of sympathy from his political opponents before he admitted to other extra-marital dalliances and referred to his Argentinian belle as his “soul-mate.” Sarah Palin was accorded no such reprieve. Yes, I think gender is entirely relevant here.

Feminist scholars have studied the double-bind of woman political leaders for a while now. Women leaders are faced with a dilemma a still-patriachical political world imposes on them: women must either trade their likeability in return for male respect; or they preserve their likeability but lose men’s respect for them in exchange. When it comes to women in positions of political power in the world that we know, they cannot be both likeable and respected. Unlike men, they cannot have their cake and eat it as well. This is not the world I like, but it is the world I see.

Let me draw an unlikely parallel to make the point. People love to hate another woman that we saw a lot of in 2008 - Hillary Clinton. Like Palin, she was to her detractors the she-devil to whom evil intentions were automatically assigned for every action. But unlike Palin, she was respected and feared - she was everything Sarah Palin was not. What Palin lacked in terms of likeability she possessed in terms of respect (or at least reverent fear). No one underestimated Hillary Clinton, no one doubted her ambition. And of course, as Barack Obama put it in one of their debates, she was only “likeable enough.” Clinton was respected as a force to be reckoned with, but she paid her dues in terms of likeability. Just like the Virgin Queen and the Iron Lady, she could only be respected if she surrendered her congeniality.

Palin stands at the other end of the double-bind. Where Palin was in need of respect she gained in terms of likeability. She was the pretty beauty queen loved and beloved by her base, unapologetically espousing a “lip-stick” feminism (in contrast to a grouchy liberal feminism). But what she enjoyed in terms of likeability she lost in terms of respect. If there was one thing her detractors have done consistently, it has been to mock her. She was the running joke on Saturday Night Life, and now, a laughing stock even amongst some Republicans who see her as a quitter and a thin-skinned political lightweight. Strangely enough, Sarah Palin is Hillary Clinton’s alter-ego. Where Clinton is perceived as strong, Palin is seen as weak; whereas Clinton turns off (a certain sort of) men, Palin titillates them.

If we lived in a post-feminist, gender-neutral world, the two most prominent women in American politics, Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton, would not so perfectly occupy the antipodal caricatures of women trapped in the double-bind of our patriachical politics. That they each face one cruel end of the double binds tells us that the two women on opposite ends of the political spectrum sit in the same patriachical boat. So the next time liberals mock Sarah Palin, they should remember that they are doing no more service to feminism than when some conservatives made fun of Hillary Clinton’s femininity allegedly subverted by her pant-suits.