Lili Hun,

Your description of American women fits some, but not all. Some rural women I've known are different. We form a team, always have, the burden leans to one side in some areas. I sure in the hell didn't teach my daughters about tampons, or application! My wife said, “One reason I married you was because I knew I could work with you, but you are different than any man I've known.” My parents were together 59 years; I watched them argue, make up, cry, laugh, and work. My father was part Norwegian, part Scotch Irish, with some Cherokee for good measure. My mother was from Puritan lineage, my grandmother, a direct descendent of Elizabeth Howe Jackson, hanged as a witch in Salem 13 generations back. I didn't get along with my mother’s family, I loved my dad’s family, bootleggers, hunters, miners, stonemasons, farmers, ranchers, loggers, rural men, most all. The independent frontiersman, they were family in groups, the North Bench, where my house now sits was called Little Norway, settled originally by my extended Norse family, my dad told me that the Shoshone lived here first.

Yes, we were taught independence, male and female. My daughter, Blondie, hunted, fished, I taught her to shoot, that was fine if that was her desire. One daughter liked to hunt with me, one didn't. The same with my two boys. I only acted like a dictator when it came to responsibilities, I was taught this way. Your upbringing sounds similar. My father taught me to hunt, survive, work, fish. I could go on for hours describing my dad, I told James a little about my mother, she lost my older brother in an accident, a very bad one. She never recovered entirely. Boys were given a long leash, girls not always, they were more protected.

I started going into the Utah Wilderness at 14, stay a week or more, fishing and hunting, this is how I became a guide. I never understood until becoming an adult, how lucky I was to be born in rural America.

Your description of American women, is what my English teacher called a sweeping generalization.

Take care of James,

Ishmael.

Dear Ishmael,

You’re right, and I thought about why this was so. I first landed in New York, then to Pine Hill, New Jersey, and then to Philadelphia. It was only in a small town in Hungary that I got to see a chicken’s neck on the chopping block and a pig butchering. Those were my only somewhat rural experiences. I myself would not be able to pluck a chicken. I’d have to just be an egg eater.

The rest of my experiences were in close proximity to people I often struggled to fit in with. One of the best things I’ve learned from James is to hold my tongue when I’m in these situations, depersonalize the experience, and under no conditions try to be a stranger’s savior. They could be faking their trouble as a pretext to get close enough to make me their victim. I am not that street-wise, in spite of my urban living experiences. Just smart enough to be super cautious. I remember a piece of feminist writing in which the author was damned if she was going to let her life activities be more limited than a man’s. Best case scenario for that would be multiple rapes with ensuing mental illness or just one rape with a side of death.

My first inclination is to help, and I’ve never understood how people ignore others in need, even just to call the police for them. James’ life stories had been initially shocking for me. Definitely lost innocence that I didn’t even know I had. His stories about women have been the same. I couldn’t believe the selfishness, calculations, callousness, dishonesty, or holding out for the most affluent prize man, regardless of love, that he recounted. I could only come up with one about a male friend, now divorced, whose wife was so indifferent to his needs, that she would only have sex with him in exchange for whatever she wanted at the moment, which at that time was a new couch…or the other whose wife hadn’t even slept with him in years…

So it’s been adding up and not equaling anything I value.

These are some of the reasons I had for making such generalizations (some harsh), or to understanding why a past coworker said that soap operas were real life (which I didn’t believe then), and to seeing how sheltered I had been, in a good way according to James. My strengths are language and culture related, and I think the languages help me to make cultural comparisons that can’t be made as easily otherwise, because it involves understanding how the culture is reflected in the language, or not being ethnocentric to a point of blindness.

So when I’ve seen Dindu cashiers with a nasty attitude towards other ethnicities, all I can think of is how often the person they’re treating badly comes from a country where they were an accountant, mathematician, teacher, productive member of their society, etc., while the Dindus can’t even wipe their financial and intellectual asses, and are unwilling to start from zero for the sake of their children, like the immigrants do, and definitely don’t sacrifice but rather punch, kick and throw their toddlers. And now they’re sainted icons of the BLM revolution? As for women who calculate their best male bet, do you think that has anything to do with the high divorce rate? Oops—the money was there, but she can’t stand him…had a kid with him already, oh well.

Don’t think I’m indiscriminately pro-immigration either. I think James is right, that we’re already headed for extremist *uslim hell, and I'm horrified at who occupies which post in our government and by the immigration statistics. Personally, I’d like our Dindus to immigrate to Africa, to their holy motherland, where they can wipe their nasty attitudes on hot, dry landing ground, because I can do without them.

So here’s to wonderful women who are great helpmates and look for the same in their men! To men who protect and love their women in spite of regularly occurring hormonal imbalances. To long marriages that feed and serve both mates! To understanding, acceptance, and long love! I don’t mean to act as if they don’t exist, and actually envy what you’ve described. I really appreciate your thoughts, Ishmael. If I had some Hungarian Bull’s Blood wine, I’d drink to them.

Sincerely,

Lili Hun