Some of Maria’s friends came storming over to the Studio Barn early this morning to help her move – Mandy Meyer-Hill, Nancy, Bariluk-Smith, Jenna Woginrich. They came in trucks and SUV’s and there was no BS, just a quiet, calm focus on packing up all of Maria’s stuff, hauling it into cars and trucks and bringing it over to the Schoolhouse Studio. It was an act of love and generosity and it made me feel happy for her and also reflective and sad about the state of men in the world.

Some men have friendships like this, but most don’t. I don’t. Watching these women work – they were impressive – I fantasized, as I sometimes do about life in a women’s world, where women were in charge, making policy setting the tone for work, love and family.

I don’t romanticize women, many are far from perfect, and I get most of my nasty mail from angry women, but when I think of a Women’s World, I think of a world with no wars, no genocide, no people shooting young girls because they want to go to school,  a gentler workplace with more concern for people. I imagine a world where the idea of Mother Earth being healed and protected was not anathema. I think of prisons emptying out – there are very few women in them as compared with men. Shootings would be almost unheard of, as would rape.

I can see a world where friendship is valued, and sensitivity and compassion are nurtured rather than ridiculed. I imagine a political world where people talked to one another,a nd  problems were solved rather than people simply being relentlessly attacked, divided,  and diminished. I imagine a world in which people made their own choices about their health and their bodies and I cannot imagine women saying the stupid and astonishingly insensitive things about  men and their lives that are a staple of the male politician.

In my fantasy I have created a Bedlam Farm Men’s Group with Simon, Strut, Rocky, me George Forss, and Red. But it is a fantasy. Simon is very much a male animal, trying to maim and run off an old pony because he is male. Strut jumps all over the hens and chases them around. Red’s whole life revolves around pushing sheep around. There is nothing evil about this, this is the work of male animals.

Violence and confrontation seems an integral part of the male psyche – a generalization – but one supported by much of the news. Watching Maria and her friends this morning, seeing them laugh and cry and work together, I thought of the power of women, their strength and humanity. I hope my daughter and I get to see what life could be like in a women’s world.