Online Shopping? Beware of Kohl’s return shipping policies

BEWARE KOHL’S ONLINE ORDERING – ALERT.

For women living in rural areas who do a lot of online shopping, beware of Kohl’s. Their policy is to not send return shipping labels for orders, so if there is any reason you do not want the merchandise you have to return it by paying 100% of full cost of shipping by UPS.

Most online retailers that we use send a pre-paid return shipping label for customer convenience. A small standard shipping fee – normally less than $10, usually around $6 or $7, depending on the size of merchandise – is deducted from your credit when issued. Some merchants advertise free shipping both ways.

Not so with Kohl’s. If Kohl’s sent you what you ordered, correct size, etc. and the product was not damaged in shipment, they are unconcerned about why you need to return an order or how much it costs for you to return it. They advise you to return it to the nearest store, which is not feasible if it’s 150 miles away.

We were also told that if you claim your order was damaged, Kohl’s will want an inspection to determine whether it was damaged in shipment or after before they will decide whether to pay for return shipping.

The Big Feed and The Art of the Rural

I’m a big fan of The Art of the Rural, so it’s fun to find out that someone from there will be at The Big Feed in Yuma, Colorado, Sat., Oct. 15. Here’s more about The Feed:

SOURCE
THE BIG FEED — 2011
Saturday, Oct. 15-16 at the Yuma County Fairgrounds, Yuma, Colo.
The entry to this event is FREE with a $5 donation and one food item to share!

The BIG FEED is an annual event and action held by M12. It is a celebration of the regional landscape, experimental art and architecture, food, music, culture and community. It is a forum to connect community members and artists in a casual atmosphere, as well as an opportunity for the larger public to learn more about the groundbreaking work presented by the attending community members, artists, musicians, critics, and curators. Landing somewhere between a family reunion, potluck dinner, symposium, and festival, The BIG FEED is held every second weekend in October. The event is open to the public and free with a $5 donation and one food item to share. For more information on the event and the organization please visit the M12 website.

Art of the Rural is also on Facebook.

10th Circuit keeps polygamous sect’s property trust under government control

Source: Salt Lake Tribune

April 27, 2011

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided to keep a polygamous sect’s property trust under government control Wednesday, siding, for now, with a state court judge in a heated judicial standoff.

The appellate judges blocked a federal court order that would have temporarily returned control to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints for the first time since the state of Utah took over the trust six years ago.

Court-appointed administrator Bruce Wisan will continue to run the trust but is barred from making any major changes.

U.S. District Judge Dee Benson ruled in February that the state takeover was illegal and this month signed the order temporarily returning it to the FLDS.

Then 3rd District Judge Denise Lindberg, who oversaw the administration of the trust following the state takeover, issued her own order blocking that move. She directed Wisan to disobey Benson’s order to turn over all records.

Full story

Polygamist compound in S.D. delinquent on property taxes

According to a story in the Rapid City Journal, the polygamist Mormon sect that owns a 140-acre compound in the southern Black Hills is $178,594 past due in its Custer County property taxes for 2008 and 2009.

From that story:

The United Order of South Dakota, which is the legal name of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints community 15 miles southwest of Pringle, has paid none of its 2009 property taxes, which were due last year. The United Order of South Dakota is more than two years past due for part of its 2008 taxes that were due in 2009. It paid the 2008 property taxes due on four of its nine parcels of property, according to the Custer County Treasurer’s office.

County Treasurer Dawn McLaughlin said the late tax payments were unusual for the group, which had always paid its previous property tax bills on time and in cash.

The FLDS practices polygamy as a religious belief, and its president and spiritual leader, Warren Jeffs, is in a Texas prison facing charges of bigamy and sexual abuse of a child. He has been imprisoned since 2007, when he was convicted in Utah of being an accomplice to rape. That conviction was overturned by the Utah Supreme Court. Whether or not Jeffs’ legal problems are contributing to financial problems for the Pringle compound isn’t clear. On Monday, FLDS elder William E. Jessop filed papers in Utah to replace Jeffs as FLDS president.

No one knows exactly how many people live at the Pringle-area compound, which is notorious among its neighbors for its secrecy and for having a guard tower on its property along Farmer Road. The best estimates, based on residential wastewater system plans submitted to the South Dakota Department of Environment and Natural Resources, is around 100 people. Residents of the compound don’t respond to media requests.

In addition to its arrears, the group will owe another $80,424.80 in 2010 property taxes this year, McLaughlin said. If the tax bill goes unpaid, the county will have the legal right to start proceedings to acquire the property in December of 2012, she said.

The United Order of South Dakota’s property near Pringle includes at least nine buildings, mostly high-quality, large log residences that are assessed at more than $5 million. They are spread over 140 acres in a secluded, fenced, forested area on the rim of Red Canyon. They most recently constructed a 13,000-square foot two-story chapel and education center that will be valued at more than $1.3 million by the county’s director of equalization when completed. Total 2011 property tax valuation for the compound is about $5.6 million.

Are you hefted?

I ran across the word “hefted” this week. Maybe you know it. “Hefted” refers to sheep that don’t need a fence because they don’t wander far from home.

Since I decided it was a term I could use, as in, “I have invitations from friends to visit wonderful places but I stay at home like a hefted sheep,” I looked it up. I didn’t use the dictionary, I Googled it. I found an article about one of my favorite subjects: our connection to our landscape, our sense of place, and how it molds us.

The author, writing in the London Times, believes that people who move from place to place develop “a sense of anomie that comes in a society constantly and unhappily on the march from one place to another. This is what social dislocation really means: dis-location, to be taken from the place you know to somewhere you do not, but carrying always the internal desire to return to the place you were once hefted.”

He goes on, ”I am certain that people grow into a landscape, and landscapes grow into the bone, leaving a permanent imprint that survives down the generations. If sheep carry a memory of place, so must every human, no matter how far we travel from our hefts. Place marks us all, and leaves its traces.”

I wonder about those of us who have gathered together around the Rural Woman Zone. Do we each have a sense of connection with the rural places where we live? What kinds of traces and memories have place left in us?  What are we connected to? The people? The landscape? The culture?

What if we are connected to a place – the landscape, the remoteness, the river, the trees, the sky, a place where it’s quiet and we can raise our own food, or get on a horse and ride across the countryside – but we aren’t a part of the local culture because it is too conservative, or racist, or patriarchal?

What do we do if we have a disconnect between our ties to the landscape and the culture? How different from the local culture and political landscape are you? Do you live in your rural area because it is your culture and you find your community there? Or have you self-marginalized in a remote place because you have chosen to live apart from the world, or to live in a landscape that you love in spite of a disconnect with the local culture?

Next time: Questions about disconnections: Are you a gun control advocate living in a “Second Amendment” culture? Are you a dove among hawks? Are you a minority or anti-racist advocate in a racist community? Are you the lone blue spot in a sea of red?

This is a topic of discussion on Rural Woman Zone on Facebook. 

Complete article, Are you hefted? by Ben MacIntyre

Rural Literacies and The Rural Womyn Zone

By Jane Lane

This Sustainable Rural Living section of  the Rural Womyn Zone website is in the process of being updated after a couple of years of neglect during what I call “my cancer year” and the year after it, while I regained my energy, my focus, and ability to do more than one thing at a time.

During that time, three women,  Kim Donehower B.A. Ph.D, Charlotte Hogg B.A. M.A. Ph.D., and Eileen E. Schell B.A. M.A. Ph.D., published a book called Rural Literacies which addresses one of the intersections that is most interesting to me —  place (rural), gender, and public memory. How do we see women in rural America? This is the reason for Rural Womyn Zone.

I first had a chance to get on the Internet at the office at the family farm. I could hardly wait to look for information about other rural women doing things that I was doing – working on a family farm, and working around women’s and social issues. What a disappointment it was for me to discover that there were organizations for rural women in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and Third World Countries, but none in the United States. There were local and regional organizations, and some of the big agricultural entities had created what looked like no more than auxiliaries for the women, who were relegated to separate forums where they discussed recipes and children, not the financial and agricultural management of the farms, for example.

If we thought the United States was so advanced that it didn’t need any movements or organizations that focused on rural women’s issues, then why were we still being treated as second class citizens?

Women were doing hard work on farms, but didn’t own the land. If they were married and their name was on the property, the United States didn’t count them as a farmer or owner of the farm, because it only counted one owner per farm, and it counted the husband, not the wife.

I contacted some of the larger “global” women’s organizations that were active in Third World Countries to see what they might offer in the United States, and was told that they did not work in the U.S. What was the assumption? That rural women in this country did not have any of the problems – access to land ownership, protection of water resources, ability to grow healthy food, involvement in planning rural communities, access to women’s reproductive health services, exposure to pesticides and other chemicals, chemical-based agriculture, lack of social capital, access to justice for victims of gender-based violence, access to credit, isolation from services, etc. — that rural women did elsewhere?

So when I was coming up with names for the web site that would become the Rural Womyn Zone, I first called it the Third-And-A-Half-World because it seemed that no one knew we even existed. Or that the problems existed.

At that time, I was reading about people who settled in North Dakota, and how it was understood that the sons would inherit the land, and the daughters would find husbands. How prevalent was this, outside of North Dakota? No woman had ever served as a county commissioner where I lived; so throughout the development of this area, no woman’s perspective was ever considered. The county commissioners appoint members to several boards and other commissions that essentially run the services in a multi-county rural area. Men were appointed to positions that impacted long-range planning and development and women were appointed to the bookmobile board. There was no woman on the city council, and when it became legally inaccessible, the comfortable old brick Carnegie-style library was abandoned, and there was discussion of building a metal building – similar to the implement dealership and the machine shed on the farm – to house the new library on an empty lot out at the outskirts of town where there were no sidewalks.

These are examples of what I believe happens when women’s vision, voices, and needs aren’t considered in community planning. Women aren’t making the news, they are quietly serving their communities, so their voices aren’t recorded, their stories are lost, and younger women who look for mentors and models are left with the prevailing masculinized versions of what it means to be a female in a rural setting – - the entrenched gender roles that complete the vicious circle.

The Rural Womyn Zone was created to build a safe online community where rural women could help each other fulfill their visions in the rural spaces where they lived, and to add their women’s voices to the public memory, as the book, Rural Literacies, describes The Rural Womyn Zone:

. . . The Rural Womyn Zone (RWZ) is a technological network that seeks to critically educate rural women. The RWZ describes itself as a “grass-roots international network of rural women which started using the Internet in 1997 to provide information, outreach, support and a networking base for rural women and their nonprofit organizations and grass roots activities” (“First Chance Project). The RWZ also seeks to “publish news and information for rural women and by rural women” and help rural women utilize technology, make connections with other rural women, and access news and other resources. Through providing access to resources that would take rural women hours to amass on their own, the RWZ demonstrates one way technology can endorse and support literacy and education can be a critical, public pedagogy of place. Despite the expense and unavailability of Internet technology, particularly high-speed access, for some rural citizens, the site explains its intention as an on-line space to gather:

One challenge faced by scholars involves how to avoid colonizing the voices of rural women, and how instead to seriously face and understand the different contexts of women’s lives. . . .Feminist theorists. . .remain caught in a bind. We call for marginalized groups of women to enable subjects to speak for themselves, but we realize that the academic and literary worlds are closed or alien to many of these women. (Carolyn Sachs, qtd. in “Why RWZ is Online”.)

The RWZ stands out from other examples in that it begins from the assumption that dominant ideologies in mainstream rural culture and the United States more broadly are to be questioned and examined: it begins from a position of decolonization . . .

. .the RWZ remains inclusive to those who may not hold the same ideologies: “You do not have to identify with the women’s movement or with feminism in order to belong to this group. But the (Ruralwomyn Email List) assumes the validity of the women’s movement and explores the gap between feminism and rural women’s experience.”  Its decolonization goals are also clear on the home page in its emphasis on political action, featuring news articles . . .such as. . . .“It’s a Long, Long Way to Towanda, Kansas: The Price of Neglecting Rural America.”

The book goes on to describe the Rural Womyn Zone as “a rich and vibrant resource for rural women that facilitates discussion and analysis of a host of issues . . . In and of itself, it serves as a kind of critical, public pedagogy and scrutinizes various rural issues to highlight power and privilege.”

And, as a detractor to the idea that Wendell Berry is the final authority on agrarianism and The Great Plains, I was surprised and delighted to read, “What might it look like to read essays by RWZ contributors alongside memoirs from the Paxton women and also Wendell Berry, for example? How much richer could conversations about place become for students and researchers when the issues these women attend to conjoin those traditionally associated with agrarianist writing?”

My cup runneth over. When I started the Rural Womyn Zone web site, I said we rural women had been “hollering out the back door into the night.” It was like Judy Blunt said in her book Breaking Clean, “you can yell and scream out here until you’re purple in the face, and nobody will hear you, even if they are listening.” To know that feminists and academics are hearing the voices of the many women of substance that make up the Rural Womyn Zone over these years, is completely fulfilling to me.

I am so glad that when my focus and energy returned, I found this book. I only wish I could personally thank the authors for what they wrote.

Sotomayor, Sexism and Senate Elections

By Terry Jacques

There are some forms of sexism that produce a universal reaction in women at a level so deep, no analysis is required. We see it, we feel it, and it hurts. Our stomachs clench involuntarily, and a burning ball of anger wells up within us. Some of us can brush off jokes or excuse a poorly worded phrase, but a paternalistic attitude assaults our very essence as women.

This is part of the daily-ness of sexism, experienced by all women, whether perpetrated by a boss or co-worker, a family member or someone we barely know. It could be the loan officer, the repairman or the salesman, but we all have suffered assaults on our competence from multiple directions, over and over again. And so whenever condescension rears its ugly head, we each react as if we were its direct target. When we see one woman talked down to, we know that all women are being demeaned.

This reaction crosses the boundaries of political ideology, generation, class and race. One need not ascribe to, or even like, feminism. No explanation about well-meaning intent and no set of talking points can change our reaction. It is what it is.

The Sonia Sotomayor hearings presented not one, but an ongoing string of incidents over several days. The image was tremendously powerful—a panel of predominantly middle-aged white men talking down to a woman whose education, relevant experience and accomplishments far outweighed their own. And it was clear that this attitude was embraced solely by the Republican members of the committee.

Time and time again, they led with an acknowledgment of Sotomayor’s impressive record, only to transition to the “but” that would introduce their true line of questioning and render their praise disingenuous. What they essentially said was, “You have a long, distinguished record as a judge, but we don’t care about that. Instead of asking about your actual judicial decisions, we’re going to focus on what you said out of court, whom you have associated with and what anonymous sources tell us about your character.”

 The message to women was unmistakable:

- Are you, as a woman and a nonwhite, capable of rendering nonbiased decisions like those of us who are white men?

- Do you have a “temperament problem”? Even though we’ve heard the same about a certain male justice, we can’t tolerate assertiveness from a woman. Perhaps you are, like many women, controlled by your emotions, or worse yet, the stereotypic “bitch.”

- How dare you think that ”a wise Latina woman” could ever render a better judgment than a white man! We are deeply concerned that you might have the audacity to think you are better than us.

- We’re going to lecture you over and over again about your poor choice of words so that we can be sure that you have grasped our meaning. Perhaps we should speak more slowly and use shorter words.

- Do you have anything to say for yourself, young lady? I think you should apologize. – I want you to take some time to reflect upon your behavior. You go on “time out,” and we’ll talk about it tomorrow.

Few women could watch so much as a portion of the hearings and not cringe at the dripping praise and overblown, often infantilizing, criticism rendered by Republican committee members. Even women hoping for Sotomayor’s demise as a judicial nominee would take issue with her treatment as a woman.

If the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the DNC are smart, they’ll start looking for and preparing women and/or Latino candidates now to run against these Republicans. Although Tom Coburn of Oklahoma is the only one running in 2010, footage of the hearings will keep, given that the issue is attitudinal and not related to policy. Since the behavior of these committee members is reflected in the talking points of the party as a whole, the same footage could be used against the Republican leadership and any senator that has been seen on television parroting these sentiments.

Arlen Specter almost lost his seat during the height of his bi-partisan popularity because the women of Pennsylvania were incensed by his aggressive treatment of Anita Hill and his cavalier attitude toward sexual harassment. Hillary Clinton was able to carry her presidential candidacy well beyond the point when she lost, mainly because women across the country bristled at the thought of a younger man ascending to power in the place of a more experienced woman. The McCain campaign recognized the power of sexism as a motivator to conservative women, although they also demonstrated a superficial level of understanding, by nominating a token woman for the vice-presidency.

The Sotomayor hearings remind us how important it is to have more women in positions of leadership, while at the same time illustrating a disturbing attitude among conservative Republicans—that it is acceptable opposition strategy to openly put women in their place. If given a viable choice, many women will vote accordingly. Democratic leaders hoping to solidify their majority in the Senate would do well to remember this.

Who voted against the Fair Pay Act?

U.S. Senators who voted against Senate Bill 181: The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009

(House vote is below)

No Democratic Senators voted against the Fair Pay Act.

All of the Republican Senators voting for the Fair Pay Act were women, Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, Olymia Snow, and Kay Hutchinson, with the exception of Arlen Specter. Independent Bernie Sanders voted yes.

Alabama
Nay AL Sessions, Jefferson [R]
Nay AL Shelby, Richard [R]

Arizona
Nay AZ Kyl, Jon [R]
Nay AZ McCain, John [R]

Florida
Nay FL Martinez, Mel [R]

Georgia
Nay GA Chambliss, Saxby [R]
Nay GA Isakson, John [R]

Idaho
Nay ID Crapo, Michael [R]
Nay ID Risch, James [R]

Indiana
Nay IN Lugar, Richard [R]

Iowa
Nay IA Grassley, Charles [R]

Kansas
Nay KS Brownback, Samuel [R]
Nay KS Roberts, Pat [R]

Kentucky
Nay KY Bunning, Jim [R]
Nay KY McConnell, Mitch [R]

Louisiana
Nay LA Vitter, David [R]

Mississippi
Nay MS Cochran, Thad [R]
Nay MS Wicker, Roger [R]

Missouri
Nay MO Bond, Christopher [R]

Nebraska Nay NE Johanns, Mike [R]

Nevada
Nay NV Ensign, John [R]

New Hampshire
Nay NH Gregg, Judd [R]

North Carolina
Nay NC Burr, Richard [R]

Ohio
Nay OH Voinovich, George [R]

Oklahoma
Nay OK Coburn, Thomas [R]
Nay OK Inhofe, James [R]

South Carolina
Nay SC DeMint, Jim [R]
Nay SC Graham, Lindsey [R]

South Dakota
Nay SD Thune, John [R]

Tennessee
Nay TN Alexander, Lamar [R]
Nay TN Corker, Bob [R]

Texas
Nay TX Cornyn, John [R]

Utah
Nay UT Bennett, Robert [R]
Nay UT Hatch, Orrin [R]

Wyoming
Nay WY Barrasso, John [R]
Nay WY Enzi, Michael [R]

House of Representative Votes Against Fair Pay

Five Democrats voted nay:

Dan Boren [D], Oklahoma
Allen Boyd [D] Florida
Bobby Bight [D]Alabama
Travis Childers [D] Mississippi
Parker Griffith [D] Alabama

Only three Republican members of the House voted for the Fair Pay Act:

Yea NJ – Christopher Smith [R]
Yea KY – Edward Whitfield [R]
Yea AK – Donald Young [R]

Are women’s interests going to be sacrificed again?

Why is the most controversial part of the stimulus bill about family planning? Whenever money and women’s wombs are connected, it seems to make people a little, uh, hysterical.

Chris Matthews became one of the latest people spreading misinformation and ridiculous uninformed personal comments on this subject when he said, “I don’t know.  . it sounds a little like China, doesn’t it?”

A complete and reasonable discussion about women’s reproductive health and freedom has been rendered almost impossible because of the fundamentalist right’s narrow focus on abortion. But that’s no reason for someone like Chris Matthews to be so uninformed when he raises the issue with the guests on his own show. There is plenty of information available on how providing education and access to family planning not only increases well-being for women, but for the economy of their country.

House Republican Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio brought the issue to the forefront when he made the rounds of the political shows complaining there was “$200 million for contraception. What does that have to do with the economy?”

And some of the “religious right” topped it off by making up a lie out of whole cloth by saying the money was for contraception and abortion.

Now news reports today indicate that the Democrats may be willing to jettison this part of the stimulus package.

So why is it that women’s issues are always the first to be sacrificed by Democrats?  

The other compelling question tonight is why so much is being said and written that reinforces the question – what does family planning have to do with the economy – but practically nothing is being said in response.

First of all, the family planning money was to extend help to states with the rising cost of services, including family planning. Each dollar invested in Title X family planning saves $3.80 in Medicaid costs for pregnancy-related health care, including care of newborns.

From a Guttmacher report:

Researchers estimate that one in five women of reproductive age were uninsured in 2003–a 10 percent increase in uninsured women since 2001–and roughly 400,000 more women joined the ranks of those needing publicly subsidized care in just two years. However, 27 states and the District of Columbia have seen family planning funding decline or stagnate since 1994–a trend that could be exacerbated by new Medicaid cost-cutting proposals and greater hostility to reproductive health issues in Congress and state legislatures.

Today, half of all women who are sexually active and fertile but do not want to get pregnant need publicly funded services to help them access birth control,” said Rachel Benson Gold, director of policy analysis at The Alan Guttmacher Institute. “Yet in Congress and the states, we are facing a potential ‘perfect storm’ that could make it harder for these women to get contraceptives, counseling, and STD testing that help them plan their pregnancies and protect their health.”

In 2002, 16.8 million women are estimated to have needed publicly supported contraceptive care, yet clinics were able to serve just 4 in 10, or 6.7 million women. As funding for programs dedicated to family planning–such as Title X of the Public Health Service Act–has decreased or leveled off, the burden of meeting women’s health care needs has shifted to Medicaid. Medicaid funding for contraceptive services has tripled since 1980, and the program now accounts for almost two-thirds of all federal and state family planning funding nationwide.