I'm reading Who Cooked the Last Supper? by Rosalind Miles. Interesting, but in the few places where I have any expertise (the Mughal rulers of India and the Buddhist tradition), I have found exaggeration and quotations taken out of context. That is not to say that the author does not have many valid and thought-provoking theses; but it does lead me to take her other quotations and facts with a grain of salt.

I have just finished also with Scheherazade Goes West by Fatema Mernissi. Her discussion of harems and their occupants, odalisques and baths both Eastern and Western, the relations between men and harems, was fascinating.

It occurs to me that suburbian America is something of a harem. During the day, the only people on the sidewalks and in the stores are women and children and the elderly. In the evening, the men come home and the women are set to work cooking and taking care of the children and tending to everyone's needs. Though the automobile allows for travel outside the immediate area, few women use their transportation as anything more than a vehicle to do errands, ferry children from point A to point B and so forth.

Women who work outside the home (like me) are equally restricted. Going straight from work to home, then immersed in housework and errands and caregiving, there is little/no time to gather with other women and talk and share our lives. We are a lot more isolated than women in European cities and towns, who live within walking distance of each other and gather in the market or the church to work (women's work) and talk and watch the children.

I liked living in Europe and in an Indian village. However, I'm an American through and through and this is where I'll spend the rest of my life. The key is to reach out and make and keep contacts, friends, sisters. And to find the time to do it all.

Interesting books are great friends, too.