On Saturday, February 23 at 7:00 pm, I went to see Michiana Monologues: Local Women’s Stories – Breaking the Silence to End the Violence at Indiana University South Bend.  This production was patterned after the Vagina Monologues but featured local women’s stories.  The idea to use local women’s stories was based on a production by St. Mary’s College students called SMC Monologues.  SMC Monologues was created from submissions by St. Mary’s students, alumnae, sisters and staff.  To involve more women from the area, Michiana Monologues welcomed submissions from the community. 

This production was presented by V-Club (Voices Against Violence) IUSB.  The stories read were sometimes funny and sometimes sad, but they were always moving.  The purpose of this production was to involve people in the effort to stop violence against women.  The goal of Michiana Monologues was not only to involve women within the community to become involved and tell their stories, but to educate a wider audience about the challenges women face.  It also intends to bring attention to violence against women and to force others to acknowledge that violence is a human rights violation.  Finally, it encourages others to work toward gender justice.

Even though the subtitle of this production was Breaking the Silence to End the Violence, not all the stories were about violence against women.  The stories told involved everything from a woman attempting to interpret her husband’s driving directions to childhood sexual abuse.  These were stories that needed to be told but also needed to be heard.   As more becomes known about the serious, long-term consequences of gender based violence, there will be more efforts to address the problem.  The story that moved me the most and actually made me cry was “Aftermath.”  It was the story of a woman’s struggles to deal with the effects of childhood sexual abuse.  Although I have never had to deal with this issue, I could feel this woman’s pain as the story was being read.  Another story, “Is He Catholic?” was a woman’s funny story of her mother’s pressure for her to marry a “good Catholic boy.”  It ended on a sad note, however, because she gave up her true love for a Catholic boy that turned out to be addicted to cocaine.  Other stories dealt with issues women deal with on a daily basis.  Stories about first kisses, abusive relationships, abortion, sexuality and coming out were all read during the evening. 

The room was packed with women and men of all ages.  Over 250 tickets were sold for each night of the show and the silent auction was also very successful. The V-Club came very close to meeting their goal of $10,000.  The profits from Michiana Monologues will benefit St. Margaret’s House, SOS of Madison Center and the YWCA of St. Joseph County.   If you missed this year’s production, you can still show your support by submitting your donation and it will be divided evenly between the three organizations.  You can send your check, made out to “V-Club IUSB to:

V-Club IUSB: Michiana Monologues

c/o April Lidinsky, Ph.D.

Women’s Studies Program

2257 Wiekamp Hall

Indiana University South Bend

1700 Mishawaka Ave, PO Box 7111

South Bend, IN 46634-71111

 One of the best things about this program is that it raised awareness of women’s issues.  There were some funny stories about the many demands of children and jobs and school make on women’s lives, especially single mothers.  If you missed this event or even if you didn’t, there will be a joint production of St. Mary’s College Monologues and Michiana Monologues on Saturday, April 19th at 7pm in the Bendix Theatre, Century Center, Downtown South Bend.  The tickets are $10 and are available at Circa Arts, Lula’s, The Beehive, and the Chicory Cafe, or by calling April Lidinsky at 874-520-4528 or Catherine Pittman at 574-284-4533.  Tickets will also be available at the door.  All proceeds will be donated to YWCA of St. Joe County and SOS of Madison Center.

Many colleges have staged the Vagina Monologues. This play by Eve Ensler has been performed by young women for V-day, a movement to stop violence against women all over the world.   V-day was organized so volunteers can raise money for organizations in their communities that increase awareness of violence against women. 

This weekend the V-club (Voices Against Violence) at Indiana University South Bend will present Michiana Monologues:  Local Women’s Stories – Breaking the Silence to end the Violence an original production inspired by Ensler’s play.  These monologues are written by local women and will be read on stage by IUSB students.   There will be stories of relationships, sexuality and many other issues affecting women from all walks of life.  The stories were submitted anonymously and are selected and edited by faculty, staff and students at IUSB.  “The wealth of women’s stories in our own community was too much to overlook,” V-Club president and event producer Danica Duesing says, “The beauty, humor, pain, regret and life that were submitted in the stories we received were powerful and exciting.” 

Michiana Monologues is based on an idea from St. Mary’s College, which has put on their own production of SMC Monologues from stories written by students, staff and alumni.  The IUSB students and staff sought advice and mentoring from the students and staff from St. Mary’s to make the production of Michiana Monologues a success.   

This production is raising money for three local organizations.  St. Margaret’s House, a day center where women can become part of a group of women so they no longer feel isolated and learn to make positive changes in their lives; the YWCA, a short-term residential facility where women can get assistance to overcome addictions and escape abusive situations; and  Sex Offense Services (SOS) of Madison Center, a rape crisis center that provides services to victims of rape and domestic violence. 

There will be two productions of this exciting new project on Friday, February 22nd and Saturday, February 23rd at 7:00 pm.  Tickets are $10.00 and can be purchased by calling (574) 520-4203.  A silent auction will begin at 6:15 both evenings.   For more information, visit the web site at www.michianamonologues.org

On February 22 and 23 Indiana University South Bend is presenting a variation of the Vagina Monologues titled Michiana Monologues: Local Women’s Stories – Breaking the Silence to End the Violence.  In this play, women will read stories written by other women about themselves, their bodies and their experiences.  Sponsored by Voices Against Violence V-Club IUSB, proceeds from Michiana Monologues will benefit three area agencies that help women. 

Michiana Monologues is modeled after a production created by St. Mary’s College.  SMC students, staff and alumni developed the idea of a performance that was both written and performed by members of the St. Mary’s community.  Because Michiana Monologues is a collection of stories written by local women within the Michiana community, the production will be more meaningful to a larger audience. 

Violence and abuse can affect people from all walks of life.  It doesn’t matter what race or culture they come from, how much money they have, or how old they are.  Violence does not discriminate.  Women are ten times more likely than men to be victims of abuse.  As I wrote in my post, Politics and Misogyny, violence against women is becoming more and more common.  Every day a woman is battered, raped or, worse, murdered.   At least one out of three women around the world has been beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused in her lifetime.  The abuser is usually someone known to her.  Domestic violence and sexual assault are crimes that not only affect the victims and their families, but society as a whole.

This production is being staged to increase awareness of violence against women.  Ending gender based violence will take a coordinated effort among many sectors of the community at both the local and national levels.  An agenda for change must include empowering women and girls.  Productions like Michiana Monologues not only raise awareness of this issue, but also raises funds for organizations that provide abused women with shelter, lobby for legal reform, and challenge attitudes and beliefs that support violence against women.

The production will begin at 7:00 pm each evening.  A silent auction featuring donated items from the community will begin at 6:15.  Tickets are $10.00 each, for more information call (574) 520-4203 or visit the web site at www.michianamonologue.org

On a shelf in my living room sits a jar of buttons.  The jar is an old mason jar that was once was used to preserve some long forgotten food.  It is an odd shape for a Mason jar: tall, narrow and rounded at the top.  Most of the buttons are very old, some are pretty, some are plain.  Some of the buttons are big and round and came from coats worn many years ago.  Some are small, some are square.  They are every color of the rainbow.  There are buttons covered in fabric, some plastic and some metal.

I wouldn’t say this is a button collection, but more a reminder of my grandmother.  Her name was Alice Bradford Charles; she was born in 1898 and lived to be 92 years old.  Grandma was a small woman, 4’11” and 105 pounds, but she had a big personality.  She was only sixteen when she married my grandfather.  He had an 80 acre farm he inherited from his family and a drinking problem.  As my aunt used to say, “Dad spent all of our money on fast women and slow horses.”  Grandma was always poor and when the depression hit, she had ten children to feed.  She was widowed at a young age, so she spent most of her life surviving on her own.  By the time her children were grown, Grandma had sold all but five acres of the farm.

My dad was the youngest of Grandma’s children and I was among the youngest of her grandchildren.  I spent most of my summers with Grandma and I adored her.  I was a shy, awkward child who stuttered and had very few friends. Grandma was my friend, teacher and companion.  She taught me how to plant, weed and harvest a garden.  When the summer was over, she taught me how to can the fruits and vegetables we spent the summer growing. 

Grandma’s farm was located outside of a small town in central Indiana.  On the property she had a small house, a barn for the cows and horses, a chicken coop and a pig sty.  The house wasn’t in very good condition, in fact the kitchen floor slanted so far to one side that my brother and I used to play soap box derby with his toy cars.  The barn was located just a few yards from the house and was large enough to house one horse and two cows.  The pig sty was located on the other end of the property mainly because of the smell generated from the hogs she raised.  Then there was the chicken coop between the barn and the pig sty. Grandma had a flower garden filled with orange poppies, red roses and silver gazing balls outside her front door. In her back yard was the vegetable garden. 

Every summer Grandma grew sweet corn, green beans, tomatoes and many other vegetables.  Grandma even grew rhubarb that my cousins and I enjoyed dipping in sugar and eating raw.  Further in the back, was a pear tree that provided enough pears to “put up” as Grandma used to say.   In the middle of winter, when the pear tree was bare, we just opened a jar of pears that tasted as if they were just picked from the tree.

While we worked, Grandma would tell me stories.  She would tell me of the first man in town to own a car.  She described the car as a horrible contraption with wooden wheels that would scare everyone’s livestock when it sped by on the gravel road.  “How fast did it go, Grandma?” I would ask.  “At least ten or fifteen miles an hour,” she answered.  Then we would laugh because we both knew that was pretty slow compared to the cars of the day.  One day, she said to me, “Treesie, you’re way too serious for someone so young.  You need to go play games with the other kids.”  So I asked her, “Grandma, what games did you play when you were little?”  That is when she told me that she was put in the county children’s home when she was only six years old.  When she was eight, she was sent to live with a family and in exchange for her room and board, she was required to work.  “I didn’t get to play games.” she told me, “I had to get up early and do chores all day to earn my keep.”  She maintained this work ethic her entire life.  For Grandma, life was simple.  She woke up early, did her chores, and took care of her family.

Back then, people did not think much about the environment and conservation.  However, my grandmother strongly believed in “waste not, want not”.  Like other people who lived during the depression, she never wasted anything.  She smoothed out aluminum foil and reused it, never used a baggie just once and thought paper towels and paper plates were a waste of hard earned money.  In the fall there were always apples, pears and pumpkins.  She had a cow for milk and chickens for eggs.  Every fall Grandma, along with the other adults in my family, would prepare for winter.  This included butchering a hog and killing and cleaning chickens for the freezer.  I will never forget the time my brother and I decided it would be a good idea to hide the axe so the chickens wouldn’t have to die.  That didn’t stop Grandma; she just put her thick-soled, black shoe on the chickens’ necks and pulled their feet.  It was brutal, but effective.  That is until one poor chicken was thrown to the ground, and it seems there was a rut where its head landed.  Because when Grandma pulled that chicken’s feet, his head popped out from under her foot, still intact, without a single feather left on it.  The sight of that bald chicken running down the road to get away from my grandmother was so shocking, it took us a few minutes to even realize what had happened.  We never saw that chicken again, but we laugh over the memory whenever our family gets together.

But, back to the buttons.  Grandma never threw an article of clothing away without first cutting off the buttons.  When she passed away in 1989, she had jars and jars of buttons.  There were so many buttons that each of her 37 grandchildren got a jar full of them.  We had so much fun remembering the dress she wore to church on Sundays that the blue buttons surrounded by rhinestones came from.  Or the button from the shirt that got passed back and forth between brothers until it was just too worn out to patch any more and it took its place in the rag pile.  Grandma was poor but she provided for her family and she did not waste one second feeling sorry about her station in life.  She was small, but she was mighty.  Whenever I look at my jar of buttons, I am reminded of my grandma, and I yearn for a simpler time when working in the garden and listening to grandma’s stories was the highlight of my day.

Plastic shopping bags are lightweight and convenient, but convenience does not outweigh the negative impact they have on our environment.  Every day as I ride the bus to work, I am troubled to see plastic grocery bags hanging in the trees and blowing down the streets and sidewalks.  A plastic grocery bag has an average useful life of 12 minutes, which is the time it takes to get from the grocery store to the kitchen.  Yet it can remain in our landfills, streets, and rivers for up to 1,000 years.  According to reusablebags.com, U.S. shoppers use an estimated 100 billion plastic bags a year and recycle only a small percentage of them.  Although plastic bags are made of recyclable material, very few recycling centers accept them because they clog recycling machinery and are difficult to separate from other materials. 

A growing number of towns, cities, states, and countries around the world are seeking ways to reduce plastic bag litter and its environmental impact.  One good solution to the plastic bag problem is to carry reusable bags to use when shopping.  Another would be to require stores to provide recycling bins and offer incentives for bringing the plastic bags back to reuse.  I feel that it is time for South Bend to follow the lead of other cities worldwide and implement ways to reduce the use of plastic bags.  If we can achieve this goal here in South Bend and it spreads throughout the rest of the country, it will be a huge step toward getting these bags off our streets and out of our landfills.

Thirty years ago, bottled water barely existed as a business in the United States.  But today, bottled water has become indispensable in our lives.  We put it in lunch boxes, it goes to meetings, lecture halls, and soccer matches.  It’s in our cubicles at work, cup holders of the treadmill at the gym; and it’s rattling around, half-finished, on the floorboards of our cars. 

 When we buy a bottle of water, what we’re buying is the bottle itself.  We’re buying the convenience and we’re buying the story the water companies tell us about the water–where it comes from and how healthy it is.  If the water we use at home cost what even cheap bottled water costs, our monthly water bills would run $9,000. 

 In addition, we buy bottled water because we think it’s healthy. Which it is, of course: anyone who buys a bottle of water instead of a 16-ounce Coke from a vending machine is making a healthier choice. But bottled water isn’t healthier, or safer than tap water. While the United States is the single biggest consumer in the world’s $50 billion bottled-water market,  it also has universally reliable tap water. Tap water in this country, with rare exceptions, is safe. It is monitored constantly, and the test results are made public.   

Meanwhile, one out of six people in the world has no dependable, safe drinking water.  Worldwide, 1 billion people have no reliable source of drinking water; 4,000 children a day die from diseases caught from tainted water.

There is one more problem with bottled water: the bottles themselves.  We pitch 38 billion water bottles a year into landfills –in excess of $1 billion worth of plastic. Americans went through about 50 billion plastic water bottles last year, 167 for each person. These are durable, lightweight containers manufactured just to be discarded. Water bottles are made of totally recyclable polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic, so we share responsibility for their impact. Our recycling rate for PET is only 23%, which means we pitch into landfills 38 billion water bottles a year–more than $1 billion worth of plastic.

Some of the water companies are aware that they are under environmental scrutiny like never before. Nestlé Waters has just redesigned its half-liter bottle, the most popular size among the 18 billion bottles the company will mold this year, to use less plastic. The lighter bottle and cap require 15 grams of plastic instead of 19 grams, a reduction of 20%. The bottle feels flimsy–it uses half the plastic of Fiji Water’s half-liter bottle–and CEO Jeffery says that crushable feeling should be the new standard for bottled-water cachet.  

Packing bottled water in lunch boxes, grabbing a half-liter from the fridge as we dash out the door, piling up half-finished bottles in the car cup holders–that happens because of a fundamental thoughtlessness. It’s only a little more trouble to have reusable water bottles, cleaned and filled and tucked in the lunch box or the fridge. We just can’t be bothered. And in a world in which 1 billion people have no reliable source of drinking water, and 3,000 children a day die from diseases caught from tainted water, that consumption of bottled water that we don’t need seems wasteful to me.   

The average person in the West throws out their own body weight in garbage every three months.  Disposing of our domestic waste requires landfill space, increases the number of garbage trucks on our roads and creates pollution problems, so reducing the amount we throw away makes sense 

Here are some ways to eliminate waste:

1)  Recycle:  Recycling generally means to re-form something.  Plastics can be made into carpet fibers, garden furniture, park benches and so on.  Metal and glass are recycled by being melted down and remolding them.  Recycling also means we should purchase products with recycled content as much as possible.  We are all being encouraged to recycle now, but recycling is only one way that we can minimize the garbage we produce.

  2) Reduce:  Our landfills are becoming full of needless waste.  Reducing the amount of garbage we create is one of the best things we can do for the environment.   Waste reduction is the most preferred method of waste management and goes a long way toward protecting the environment.  The benefits of preventing waste go beyond reducing reliance on other forms of waste disposal. Preventing waste also can mean economic savings for communities, businesses, schools, and individual consumers. 

Nearly all our waste comes from the things we buy, so reducing waste doesn’t start at the garbage cans but at the store.  Many companies, such as Kelloggs and General Mills are reducing the packaging on their products.  By reducing their packaging by 10-15%, trees are saved and the amount of waste is drastically reduced.  Purchasing durable, long-lasting goods will also reduce the amount of waste we throw away.

3) Reuse:  Reusing items means giving them another lease on life before discarding or recycling them.  Taking unwanted clothes, shoes and household items to thrift stores is a great way to do this.  There are more than 6,000 reuse centers around the country, ranging from specialized programs for building materials or unneeded materials in schools to local programs such as Goodwill and the Salvation Army, according to the Reuse Development Organization.  Here are some ways to reduce waste by reusing products: 

• Use durable coffee mugs.
• Use cloth napkins or towels.
• Donate old magazines or surplus equipment.
• Reuse boxes.
• Turn empty jars into containers for leftover food.
• Purchase refillable pens and pencils.

We can eliminate tons of plastic water bottles in our landfills by buying and using reusable hard plastic bottles. The plastic containers that fruit comes in are just right for starting seedling or use them to mix paint. 

There is no simple answer to the environmental problems we have created by our wasteful ways.  However, by doing small things to help, together we can make a big difference.  Recycling and reusing are great options.  But reducing our waste in the first place is the best option of all.  Remember recycling industries only exist if there is a market for their products, so buy recycled goods whenever you can. 

For some time I have been trying to become greener.  I have tried to do my part for the environment by recycling and conserving energy by replacing light bulbs with compact fluorescents.  I have even given up bottled water to reduce the number of plastic bottles I discard. 

For a long time, I had seriously been considering public transportation.  After all, I live on the bus route that goes straight to my place of employment, and several times a day I hear the bus rumbling down the street in front of my house.  So when I woke up one morning to discover snow-covered streets, I decided that would be the perfect day to leave my car in the garage and take the bus to work.

I decided to dress extra warm because of the wait on the street corner and I wasn’t sure how warm the bus would be.  So I donned my extra sweater, coat, boots, hat and gloves and trudged through the snow to the corner.  It was very cold, and it was snowing heavily.  Fortunately, I didn’t have to wait long before the bus arrived.  Being new to public transportation, I wasn’t sure what was expected of me as I boarded the bus for the first time.  I knew that I needed 75 cents in exact change, but beyond that I was clueless.  The bus driver must have sensed my uncertainty because he casually pointed to the coin slot and asked, “Transfer?”  After depositing my coins and nearly tripping on my way to a seat, the bus was once again on its way, and I reached my destination within ten minutes of boarding.  So I thought, “This is easy, I don’t know why I didn’t do it sooner.”

However, going home was not to be as simple.  I got off work at 5:00, and a few minutes later the bus was scheduled to arrive at the bus stop conveniently located in the parking lot.  When the bus arrived, I learned that there are incoming and outgoing buses and, of course, this was not the bus I needed.  So I waited…  In the meantime, concerned co-workers stopped to offer me a ride home.  When I explained that I was waiting on the bus, some looked at me as if I had lost my mind and asked, “On purpose?”  Others said, “Good for you, I wonder if the bus goes by my house.”  Either way I thanked them and declined their offers.

Because it was Friday, it didn’t take long for the parking lot to empty and I was still waiting for my bus.  And I waited… At this point, I was questioning my decision to turn down my co-worker’s offers.  After another twenty minutes, my outgoing bus arrived.  It turns out the bus driver, in an attempt to get as close to the curb as possible for an elderly customer, got stuck in a snow bank.  All was forgiven, and he dropped me almost at my doorstep so I didn’t have to walk in the snow. However, as I unlocked my front door, I wondered if he did so because I was another of his “elderly” customers.  Surely not!!

Even though I decided to take public transportation because of my dread of driving in the snow, I can also help the environment by not driving my car every where.  Using public transportation saves 1.4 billion gallons of gas a year, the equivalent of gassing up 300,000 cars.  I have taken the bus to work every day since, and with bus pass in hand, I now feel like I’m a pro.  With the exception of the long wait to go home the first day, my experience with public transportation has been a good one.  And I have completed another small step toward reducing my impact on the environment.