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Troopers say hero dog Buddy led them to rural Mat-Su fire
Owner said ''get help,'' and shepherd did the rest.
By JAMES HALPIN
[email protected]
Published: April 23rd, 2010 07:39 AM
Last Modified: April 23rd, 2010 10:01 AM
Alaska State Troopers plan to recognize a German shepherd named Buddy for what they say were his "valiant actions" guiding an officer to the scene of a fire this month.
Buddy's owner, 23-year-old Ben Heinrichs, was working on a vehicle in a shop outside the family's home in the Caswell Lakes area the night of April 4 when a spark from a heater ignited gasoline and gave Heinrichs flash burns to his face and second-degree burns to his left hand, he said.
He went outside and rolled to put out the flames. Buddy, a 5-year-old companion Heinrichs has had since a puppy, had been shut in the shop, so Heinrichs let him out of the burning structure.
"I just told him, 'We need to get help,' and then that's the last time I seen him," Heinrichs said. "I didn't train him or nothing. He just took off and went and did what he did. ... He was just being a good dog."
The sequence of events, as related by troopers, runs like an episode of "Lassie."
An officer responding to a call about the fire, trooper Terrence Shanigan, was having trouble finding the scene because his global positioning device was on the fritz, troopers spokeswoman Beth Ipsen said.
Shanigan, who almost took the long way around the neighborhood, came across Buddy on Caswell Loop Road. The dog took off, and acting on a hunch, Shanigan followed the dog down a side road, she said.
A video shot by the trooper's dashboard camera shows Buddy trotting along the side of the road coming toward the officer, then looking at the vehicle and breaking into a run as Shanigan follows. The dog runs ahead of the patrol vehicle and takes a left turn, ending up at the burning structure.
Troopers are convinced the dog was leading Shanigan to the fire, Ipsen said.
"Buddy's a pretty shy dog, and he was several blocks away just kind of hanging out. By all accounts this is not normal behavior for him," Ipsen said. "Buddy's not trained. This is something he did pretty much on his own."
The workshop, which was fully engulfed in flames, was destroyed, but Heinrichs said he thinks Buddy's actions prevented the fire from spreading to the family's home.
Troopers plan to recognize Buddy's bravery at a ceremony today. The family will get a letter and Buddy will receive a metal dog bowl engraved with the troopers' logo and Buddy's name with the words, "In appreciation of your diligence and assistance to Alaska State Troopers."
SALT LAKE CITY - A Utah woman has been sentenced to 30 days at home with an ankle monitor for blindfolding her husband and promising him a surprise before hitting him in the head with a hammer three years ago.
Amy Teresa Ricks also was sentenced to probation and community service Monday in 3rd District Court. The 37-year-old pleaded guilty to second-degree felony aggravated assault in February.
Prosecutors have agreed to reduce the conviction to a third-degree felony after Ricks completes probation. They also agreed to let Ricks seek expungement of the crime after seven years.
Ricks' husband suffered minor injuries in the May 2007 attack. At the time of her plea, Ricks' defense attorney said the two were still married but were separated.
___
Information from: The Salt Lake Tribune, http://www.sltrib.com
CALGARY -- A Calgary mother fighting to free her son from the American foster system says she hopes the "tortuous" two-year separation could finally come to an end this summer.
Lisa Kirkland, 35, says she's optimistic that a U.S. judge may finally order the release of her 12-year-old son Noah, who was taken into protective custody while visiting his stepfather in Oregon in the summer of 2008. He has since been shuffled through four foster homes in the state as his mother fights for his return home.
A campaign to make that happen is gaining momentum, with a Facebook page attracting hundreds of supporters and American media giant CNN taking her case to the U.S. airwaves.
"But we still haven't reached that critical mass that will tip things over and have the Prime Minister's Office more involved and pushing to get my son back," Kirkland said Sunday.
In what a lawyer described as a "bizarre" and unprecedented case, Noah Kirkland has been held in custody by Oregon's Department of Human Services (DHS) despite the lack of any evidence the child was abused or neglected by his Canadian family.
"You'd expect this to be coming out of Saudi Arabia or Bolivia -- judicial systems that we don't feel like we understand. We think that we understand the American judicial system, but we don't," said Regina-based lawyer Tony Merchant, who has taken on the fight to bring home Noah.
The ordeal began when Noah, then 10, was stopped by police for riding a bicycle without a helmet. He was in Oregon visiting his stepfather, an American citizen and the only father he'd known since age two. John Kirkland lived part of the year there, separate from his wife and children due to a chronic illness made worse by harsh Canadian winters.
The police reported the incident to child welfare authorities, who took Noah into custody because he was not with a person they considered a parent. At the time, Kirkland was in Calgary, where she'd just moved so she could get better services for Noah. The youngster has severe attention deficit disorder and is considered requiring special needs, though he maintains straight A's at school.
Ever since, a state judge has remained steadfast in his refusal to return custody to Lisa Kirkland or her parents in Calgary despite reviews by child welfare authorities here, who concluded she is fit to properly parent and care for her son.
Kirkland can't even visit her son in Oregon; after routinely travelling to the U.S. she was suddenly refused entry last year due to a 2005 conviction for growing medicinal pot for her husband. She served 10 days community service for the crime.
Merchant said the case is unheard of and is shocked at how far the system seems to have gone to defend its initial actions, which he said are understandable but wrong.
"It's hard to understand how they went so far wrong. But that's the reality we're dealing with," said the lawyer.
Noah turned 12 on March 21 but his mother wasn't allowed to speak to him on the phone that day. She said officials refuse to allow her unmonitored conversations with Noah and disconnect the line if she speaks about the case to bring him home.
"This isn't a matter of me stomping my feet and saying I want my kid back. I love my son, I want him home. Why is he still down there?" Lisa asked.
Merchant and several Canadian politicians are now asking the same question.
Calgary MP Rob Anders has taken up Lisa Kirkland's case, offering to go to Oregon and bring the child back, but otherwise Ottawa has yet to respond to calls for help.
"If this were an American child in Canada the American government would be going insane. The Canadian government hasn't handled this very well," said Merchant, who has also filed an application under The Hague Convention in U.S. Federal Court asking for the boy's return to Canada under international law.
Calgary Herald
[email protected]
April 12, 2010
Dear Maude Wilkins Families,
March is National Women's history month. The Advisory Council on Women in Burlington County sponsors a contest where Maple Shade schools have been the recipient of many awards. Maude Wilkins' classes have studied the role of women in society over the decades and how their dress has changed with each role. The culminating activity for these lessons was to hold a fashion show to display the different eras of clothing. The fashion show was to be videotaped to submit our project for the awards.
I wanted to clear up any misconceptions about the clothing show. It was never our intention to have boys dress up as women. There are many different time periods that had women and men dressing in pants, suits, and even sweat suits. Students were just asked to dress as a time period, not a woman. The children were then being asked to identify their time period of dress.
At this time, we are cancelling the fashion show. The culminating activity for this project will ask all students to draw a picture of a person dressed in clothing from a time period of their choice. The time period must be noted on the project. The project will be handed in on Monday, April 19, 2010.
We apologize for any confusion or frustration this might have caused.
Sincerely,
Beth F. Norcia, Principal
Beagy Zielinski is a German-born 28-year-old stylist who moved to New York to study fashion in 1995 and stayed. Just before Christmas, she broke up with her blue-collar boyfriend, who repaired Navy ships.
"He was extremely insecure about my career and how successful I am," Ms. Zielinski said.
An analysis of census data to be released Tuesday by the Pew Research Center found that she and countless women like her are victims of a role reversal that is profoundly affecting the pool of potential marriage partners.
"Men now are increasingly likely to marry wives with more education and income than they have, and the reverse is true for women," said Paul Fucito, spokesman for the Pew Center. "In recent decades, with the rise of well-paid working wives, the economic gains of marriage have been a greater benefit for men."
The analysis examines Americans 30 to 44 years old, the first generation in which more women than men have college degrees. Women's earnings have been increasing faster than men's since the 1970s.
"We've known for some time that men need marriage more than women from the standpoint of physical and mental well-being," said Stephanie Coontz, a professor at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., and research director for the Council on Contemporary Families, a research and advocacy group. "Now it is becoming increasingly important to their economic well-being as well."
The education and income gap has grown even more in the latest recession, when men held about three in four of the jobs that were lost. The Census Bureau said Friday that among married couples with children, only the wife worked in 7 percent of the households last year, compared with 5 percent in 2007. The percentage rose to 12 percent from 9 percent for blacks, among whom the education and income gap by gender has typically been even greater.
"I'm not married, I would like to be married, and my friends are all in a similar situation," said Dr. Rajalla Prewitt, a 38-year-old psychiatrist in New Jersey. "We're having difficulty finding someone where there's a meeting of the minds, where we can have the same goals and values."
"Particularly, African-American men who are educated want a traditional home where they are the breadwinner," said Dr. Prewitt, who is a black woman.
In 2007, the Pew report found, median household incomes of married men, married women and unmarried women were all about 60 percent higher than in 1970. But among unmarried men, median household income rose by only 16 percent. These days, men who marry typically gain another breadwinner.
In 1970, 28 percent of wives had husbands who were better educated, and 20 percent were married to men with less education. By 2007, the comparable figures were 19 percent and 28 percent. In 1970, 4 percent of husbands had wives who made more money; in 2007, 22 percent did.
College-educated wives are less likely to have a husband who is college-educated and in the highest income bracket than they were in 1970, and married women are less likely to have a husband who works.
"Among all married couples," the report said, "wives contribute a growing share of the household income, and a rising share of those couples include a wife who earns more than her husband."
While marriage rates have declined over all, women with college degrees are still more likely to marry today than less educated women.
But some women find that the dating pressures are intense. Syreeta McFadden, a 35-year-old Columbia and Sarah Lawrence graduate who is between jobs after working in real estate development, said: "With men of any ethnic group, it's a little intimidating for them to encounter smart women. Money is tricky.
"But, I think for me, it comes down to compatibility," Ms. McFadden said. "Can you grow with me? Or as my genius friend the textile designer says, she asks on first dates or meeting men in bars, 'Do you have a passport and a library card?' "
Elaine Richardson, who is in her 50s, is divorced and owns a health care consulting firm in Westchester, said that men "call you high maintenance if you look like you don't need anyone to take care of you."
Professor Coontz at Evergreen State recalled that from the late 19th century through the 1940s, it was not uncommon for a woman to finish high school or go to college and marry a man who made more but was less educated.
"This changed in the 1950s to 1970, as financial returns to education really mounted for men, but not for women," Professor Coontz said.
The latest shift, Professor Coontz said, "is truly a sea change in gender relations within marriage."
"Many people have worried that men's increasing dependence on their wives, especially if they are laid off, might lead to the kind of backlash against women workers that happened in the Great Depression," Professor Coontz said. "But I think that wives' work has become so normative that this is unlikely."
Ms. Zielinski, the fashion stylist, said her best friend, a man, told her once: " 'You are confident, have good credit, own your own business, travel around the world and are self-sufficient. What man is going to want you?' He laughed, but I found that pretty depressing."
Married parents don't have any legal obligation to pay for their adult children's college education or living expenses. But a bill just introduced in Virginia's legislature would require divorced parents to pay for such expenses.
HB 146 would extend child support beyond age 18 to age 23 when the "child" is attending college. Right now, child support in Virginia usually ends soon after the child reaches the age of majority.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court struck down a similar provision providing for post-majority support as a violation of the Constitution's Equal Protection Clause. It reasoned that since married parents do not have to support their adult children, it was discriminatory to force divorced parents to do so. See Curtis v. Kline, 666 A.2d 265 (Pa. 1995). (Courts have apparently split over the constitutionality of such requirements).
I agree with the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's reasoning, on principle. Married parents in Virginia generally have no duty to support their college-age children. Thus, neither should divorced parents.
But I also oppose this requirement based on my experience as a lawyer. (I should note, by the way, that I am not divorced, and have no child support obligations).
As an intake lawyer for a non-profit law firm for over 6 years, I saw cases of aging divorced parents forced to pay the college bills of ungrateful offspring with whom they had an acrimonious relationship, even though they could ill-afford to do so - like a father dying of incurable liver disease forced to pay his estranged daughter's graduate school expenses, under a state law permitting child support to be awarded for adult children. (We did not handle family-law cases in state court and I thus had no choice but to reject these people's pleas for legal assistance).
Divorced parents, like married parents, should have the right not to pay for their adult children's living expenses or college costs -- for example, if the child engages in conduct or a field of study that is objectionable to the parent.
It is an unfortunate reality that courts are likely to apply this bill, if it is enacted and not struck down, in a way that results in support obligations that are inequitable to some aging parents. Virginia courts have sometimes awarded support even in situations where statutory language would appear to bar any support. For example, in Calvin v. Calvin, 31 Va. App. 181 (1999), the Virginia Court of Appeals awarded spousal support, even though the recipient had engaged in adultery and been "vindictive and cruel" in the court's own words, and even though Virginia's statutes expressly bar support to adulterous spouses absent a finding of "manifest injustice" under both economic and fault-based factors. Additional examples are given here.
By MARTIN VAUGHAN
WASHINGTON -- Some married couples would pay thousands of dollars more for the same health insurance coverage as unmarried people living together, under the health insurance overhaul plan pending in Congress.
The built-in "marriage penalty" in both House and Senate healthcare bills has received scant attention. But for scores of low-income and middle-income couples, it could mean a hike of $2,000 or more in annual insurance premiums the moment they say "I do."
The disparity comes about in part because subsidies for purchasing health insurance under the plan from congressional Democrats are pegged to federal poverty guidelines. That has the effect of limiting subsidies for married couples with a combined income, compared to if the individuals are single.
People who get their health insurance through an employer wouldn't be affected. Only people that buy subsidized insurance through new exchanges set up by the legislation stand to be impacted. About 17 million people would receive such subsidies in 2016 under the House plan, the Congressional Budget Office estimates.
The bills cap the annual amount people making less than 400% of the federal poverty level must pay for health insurance premiums, ranging from 1.5% of income for the poorest to 11% at the top end, under the House plan.
For an unmarried couple with income of $25,000 each, combined premiums would be capped at $3,076 per year, under the House bill. If the couple gets married, with a combined income of $50,000, their annual premium cap jumps to $5,160 -- a "penalty" of $2,084. Those figures were included in a memo prepared by House Republican staff.
The disparity is slightly smaller in the Senate version of health-care legislation, chiefly because premium subsidies in the House bill are more targeted towards low-wage earners.
Under the Senate bill, a couple with $50,000 combined income would pay $3,450 in annual premiums if unmarried, and $5,100 if married -- a difference of $1,650.
Republicans say the effect on married couples whose combined income makes them ineligible for subsidies is even greater -- up to $5,000 or more -- but that is more difficult to measure because it includes assumptions about the price of insurance policies.
Democratic staff who helped to write the bill confirmed the existence of the penalty, but said it cannot be remedied without creating other inequities.
For instance, they said making the subsidies neutral towards marriage would lead to a married couple with only one bread-winner getting a more generous subsidy than a single parent at the same income-level.
"The Finance Committee, along with other committees in the Senate, took pains to craft the most equitable overall structure possible, and that's what we have here," said a Democratic Senate Finance Committee aide.
If the bill passes in its current form, it would be far from the first example of federal and social benefits creating incentives to remain single. Under current law, marriage can have a negative impact on a person's ability to claim the earned income tax credit and welfare benefits including food stamps.
In any progressive system of taxes or benefits, there are trade-offs between how well-targeted a subsidy is and how equitable it is, said Stacy Dickert-Conlin, an economics professor at Michigan State University.
"You might like to have it be progressive, equitable and marriage-neutral. But you have to decide what your goals are, because you can't accomplish all three," she said.
The marriage penalty in the health bill has not been a major focus of attack by Republican opponents of the bill, who are focusing on larger themes such as new taxes in the bill and growth in government spending.
But it has caught the attention of some conservative groups, who claim that the prospect of reduced subsidies will dissuade people from tying the knot.
"This seems to not only penalize the married, but also those who would have the most to gain from marriage -- the poor," said Jenny Tyree, an analyst at the Colorado-based Focus on the Family.
Ms. Dickert-Conlin said that isn't borne out by research in the area.
"Most of the literature says that people do not make decisions about whether or not to get married based on" government benefits, she said.
"You might see bigger effects on the timing -- someone choosing to get married in January, instead of December," she said.
Woman accused of stabbing boyfriend's 3-year-old child as he tried to break up
By Maxine Bernstein, The Oregonian
January 04, 2010, 5:11PM
Portland police say a 22-year-old woman stabbed her boyfriend's 3-year-old daughter in the torso this weekend as he was attempting to break up with her, according to court documents.
Serenity Sanchez was arraigned today on allegations of attempted aggravated murder, first-degree assault and unlawful use of weapon.
The girl suffered injuries to her liver, pancreas and underwent surgery when she arrived at Oregon Health Sciences University Saturday night. She remains hospitalized. The injuries are not life-threatening, police said.
Police got a 9-1-1 call about 5:15 p.m. from the victim's father at his home in the 3300 block of Southeast 129th Avenue.
Portland police said Sanchez was leaving the home as they arrived. Officers asked her to remain at the scene as they interviewed the victim's father and located the wounded girl.
The girl's father told police that he had been trying to break up with Sanchez for several hours and she was refusing to leave his home. Just before he called police, he said he saw Sanchez enter his daughter's room and heard his 3-year-old scream. As he went to check on her, he saw Sanchez emerge holding a knife, and he wrestled it away from her.
Police found the girl lying on her stomach. It appeared as if her intestines were protruding from her laceration, the court affidavit says.
Police say Sanchez tried to leave the home, even after police arrived. At one point when police requested her remain at the scene, she reached into her purse and threatened to "Tazer" the officer, a court affidavit says.
Police took Sanchez to the ground, and placed her in custody, the affidavit says.
Sanchez is being held on a total bond of $505,000. She's due back in court Jan. 12.
--Maxine Bernstein
Why I Left My Beta Husband
By Amy Brayfield
A few years ago, my husband, Mark, and I were at one of those hip downtown restaurants sipping mojitos and nibbling on lime-spiked seviche when one of my bosses appeared from a cloud of Cuban-cigar smoke and patted my shoulder. When I introduced him to Mark, he naturally asked what he did for a living. We both froze.
"I do some freelancing," Mark said.
"He studied film at NYU," I said at the same time.
Mark looked at me and shrugged. "I stay home with our daughter," he said, as my colleague quietly balked.
"He makes it possible for me to do my job," I said, laughing. But inside, I was mortified. Technically, I had it all back then, including a gorgeous toddler and a cool job.
What I didn't have was a husband I felt proud of.
God knows I wanted to be proud of him. Mark is smart and funny and the only person I know who gets off on explaining why the Sherlock Holmes tales are more colonialist than patriarchal. And if you asked me about somebody else's stay-at-home husband, I'd be all over the subject, spouting statistics about how important the father-daughter bond is to girls' self-esteem and how limiting it is to expect women to mind the home front. But living it was completely different.
Maybe it's because the plan wasn't for Mark to be a stay-at-home dad. I went to work when he started graduate school, thinking that I'd head back for my own Ph.D. once he was done. I envisioned us as hard-core academics, reading passages from Joyce to each other while I put together a fancy dinner of organic rutabaga soup with apple crème fraîche swirls on top. Instead, I fell in love with my first job at a small food magazine, and eventually, after a few promotions, I found myself working as a staff writer for a national women's magazine.
Things went less smoothly for Mark. By the time we found out I was pregnant--three years into our marriage--he'd been looking for a job teaching film for six months with no luck. Then he began applying for any old job, but nothing panned out. Still, the minute my pregnancy test flashed its double pink lines at me, I knew I needed to put my career on hold.
I stayed home with our daughter for six months after she was born while Mark continued, yes, looking for a job. In 18 months, he got just two calls. Meanwhile, I was being pursued by headhunters. Eventually, I took an editing job at a health magazine.
I felt like myself again--pitching ideas, doing the witty-banter thing in the halls with my colleagues. But my marriage started to fall apart. I felt guilty about being glad to go back to work, and in my head, I made it Mark's fault. Because he couldn't find a job, I blamed him when I was working late and had to miss the baby's bedtime; it was his fault I had to go in early every day, since the fact that he couldn't find a job meant that I couldn't afford to lose mine.
And when I got home, I seethed. I couldn't walk across the living room without tripping over some plastic toy or container of wipes. The baby was in the same little nightgown she'd slept in the night before. There wasn't a hint of dinner on the horizon. He was home all day--couldn't he at least run a freaking load of laundry?
Eventually, communication between Mark and me deteriorated to the point where all we talked about was the baby. Had she gotten enough sleep? What had she eaten for lunch? How could she have run through an entire value pack of diapers in one weekend? "Wait till I tell you what she did," he'd say every once in a while, as we gazed adoringly at the baby and at each other. In those moments--watching him gently rock her to sleep while singing "Punk Rock Girl"--I was reminded why I had once thought Mark was the sexiest man in the world.
But our sex life was in ruins. I chalked it up to the transition period all new parents go through. Then one day, I realized it had been almost a year since Mark and I had made love.
Sometimes he'd say, "I really think things would be better for us if we could just be intimate again." Or he'd put the baby to bed early and come into the living room with two glasses of wine and a book of poetry--our classic recipe for seduction--but just the thought of him touching me made me recoil. "Maybe I'm just not a sexual person anymore," I told him, and I honestly meant it.
The truth is, I wasn't attracted to him anymore. It wasn't that he'd changed--he still had the same floppy brown hair, bright green eyes, and long freckled limbs that had literally made me quiver when I first met him. But in my head, I'd neutralized him as a sexual being. I wanted to be overwhelmed by the sheer power of his masculinity in the bedroom, but I wasn't. Because I felt like the man in our relationship.
We went to see a therapist. "Don't you think I resent you for how easy it is for you?" Mark asked me during one session. "You have this great job, and I'm home like a slave, running errands, taking care of your shit, and you can't even spare me five minutes of conversation at the end of the day."
I think it was the first time I'd actually listened to what he had to say in years. He said that he was angry with me for always putting work first and angry with himself for not being able to find a job. He said he didn't appreciate being treated like a nanny-slash-housekeeper-slash-gardener. But what alternatives was he offering?
We separated a few months later.
In retrospect, I realized I had this preconceived idea of what a sexy, attractive man should be like. I imagined being married to, well, someone like me. Someone whose job sounds interesting to other people. Someone who walks out the door with a pressed shirt on, a leather briefcase, and a confident gait. Someone who wins bread. Does that make me a sexist? "I always felt embarrassed and guilty--you had all these ambitions for me that I felt like I wasn't living up to," Mark said to me after our divorce.
So nobody was more surprised than I was when I went ahead and fell for another stay-at-home dad.
Here's the difference, though: Jason knows what he wants--and it's not a corner office. He wants to have his afternoons free to hit the park with my daughter or paint or translate the writings of Pablo Neruda. There's nothing thwarted or self-pitying about him. When we're cooking dinner together on Friday nights in a kitchen fragrant with curry, or trying to drink coffee in bed on Sunday mornings while my daughter dances around us, I'm so attracted to him that it's all I can do not to rip his clothes off then and there.
Put it this way: Whether it's me or the fort he's holding, I think it's damn sexy.
Ellie Levenson
My husband and I have just celebrated our first wedding anniversary. As we hadn't been together that long before we decided to get married, we've now been married for longer than we were boyfriend and girlfriend.
The speed of our nuptials surprised me, not least because I had always been antimarriage in the past. Sure, I liked going to other people's weddings -- admiring the dresses and snaffling the canapés -- but I always felt slightly superior, wondering why they had decided to opt for such a ridiculous ritual. We don't need to be married in society to have a valid relationship. Nobody stops couples living together, buying property together or having children, regardless of marital status. I thought marriage was outdated and silly. Besides, how can you promise to love someone for the rest of your life when you could grow apart in so many different ways? Above all, I felt that marriage was in some way antifeminist.
I said as much to my now husband over dinner on our first date, when the conversation ranged across all the areas you should probably avoid on first dates: faith schools, voting preferences, children's names, marriage. While I'm pleased that he listened to me rant about these issues, albeit with a twinkle in his eye, I'm also pleased that he didn't take me so seriously as to believe I would never change my mind.
As our relationship grew, and it became obvious that we were serious about each other, the word marriage kept being mentioned. Despite my feminist instincts, I found the idea strangely attractive. So much so that instead of thinking about whether feminists should believe in marriage, the question I had to ask myself was: is it possible to have a feminist wedding? And I believe that it is.
Related Links
* Unconventional celebrity weddings
The first feminist thing about our wedding was the nature of the proposal. I do not believe that men have to propose to women, but neither did I feel comfortable proposing myself. If he had said yes, how would I ever have believed he wanted it as much as me, rather than saying yes to keep me quiet? After many conversations about whether we would get married, and, in fact, after we had provisionally booked our venue, I insisted on a proposal. He duly went away and planned my nonsurprise, popping the question on a hill overlooking our beloved London, followed by a fancy dinner.
Asking my dad for my hand in marriage was not going to happen either. My dad, whom I get on with brilliantly, advises me on many aspects of my life, but I am a grown woman and he does not give me permission to do anything, just as I do not give him permission to do the things he wants to do.
When it came to the nature of the event itself, I was clear that I did not want to be given away -- I do not belong to anyone. Obeying was out of the question. Nor did my fiancé and I spend the night apart before the wedding. We already lived together, so, as we were about to make a big public statement, who would be more comforting to be around than each other? We went out for another fancy dinner, walked along the Thames and congratulated ourselves on being so clever. The next morning we got a cab to the register office; we walked into the marriage room along with all our guests and took our seats at the front.
Needless to say, my dress was not white -- no symbols of virginal brides for me. And the speeches? Well, there were five. My dad spoke, not for me but to say the things I felt unable to say without crying, like remembering the dead relatives who could not be with us. Then my best woman spoke, then my husband's best man, then me, and then my husband.
I am not the only advocate of the feminist wedding. Jessica Valenti, an American feminist writer I admire, is getting married this summer. A founder of the feminist website feministing.com, she faced far more criticism than me for deciding to get married. She is definitely not what I term in my book, The Noughtie Girl's Guide to Feminism, a Fumbie -- that is, feminist until matrimony beckons. Fumbies are those women who forget about their feminist ideals the minute they get a ring on their finger and become a simpering bride, given away, obedient and letting men speak for them. Of course, no wedding can be truly feminist. In our own feminist wedding, did my husband and I check that it wasn't only women making the food, or cleaning up the venue? No, we didn't. Symbolically, at least, we felt our wedding was as feminist as it could be. Is our marriage as feminist as the wedding? Well, I hang out the washing most often and he tends to mow the grass. We fight over who puts the rubbish out. I write the greetings cards and he gets rid of the bugs. But we have our own names, our own identities and neither of us has more power in the relationship than the other. Our feminist wedding led to a feminist marriage, and, on the day itself,
I remembered the words of a former colleague. She had told me, many times, as I railed against marriage, this nugget of truth: "You won't want to get married until you meet the man you want to marry."
The Noughtie Girl's Guide to Feminism by Ellie Levenson (Oneworld £9.99)
