Books

Blog

25 Feb

Posted at 06:00h in Uncategorized
This is the third and last installment of a three-part meditation on women’s suffrages—plural. Parts One and Two examined the tortured twisting path of suffrage in this country, which always prioritized white, Christian, land-holding, property-owning males. Contrary to all the national mythography, the record shows historical hostility toward women and toward those men who were poorer, or “foreign.” That is, unless they were useful: Native Americans whose land and lives were for the taking, Africans abducted and forced here into enslavement, Chinese “imported” to build railroads and infrastructure and then no longer welcome, and so on. Women? Servants of the indentured, slaves of the slaves. In Parts One and Two, I tried to offer consciousness-changers that have meant much to me and that I recommend as sources for self-education about a legacy with which we are both burdened and privileged. The burdened part—well, see above. The privilege comes in, for every American, because the Framers (white, propertied, highly flawed males) nonetheless shared an impossibly impractical, aspirational vision that had not been put to the test of practice anywhere, ever. They knew that realizing that vision in reality would be a continuous, arduous task. The phrase "To form a more perfect union” in the Preamble to the Constitution reveals a diplomatically cautious James Madison trying to affirm the vision and not insult the original 13 states yet acknowledge the endless road ahead. So that was the goal of Parts One and Two. Now it’s time to get personal.

18 Feb

Posted at 06:00h in Uncategorized

In last week’s blog post, I tried, albeit superficially, to show that the century-long movement for women's suffrage, which finally won the vote for (some) women in 1920, took place in a context and country where originally only white, Christian, property-owning, land-holding males possessed the franchise—and they weren't particularly eager to share it with anybody who didn't meet those identifying qualifications. The ignorance all of us—female and male, people of color and white people—have been infected with is painful and  poisonous, but lancing and draining it will also hurt, as that requires an honesty to which we apparently as yet only aspire. Honesty means I have to start this week with two corrections. First: last week I ended with a quote from Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, who said she wore white to the State of The Union speech in honor of Alice Paul and the suffrage movement but also carried a kente...

11 Feb

Posted at 06:00h in Uncategorized

As you probably know, we’re approaching the 100 birthday of the 19thAmendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1920, which proclaims, The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Well, that seems simple enough, and a damned good thing, too, hard-won through more than a previous century of organizing, picketing, divorces and child custody losses and job firings, arrests and beatings and jails and rapes and hunger strikes! What’s not to celebrate? Historical illiteracy, that’s what. It’s not your fault if you don’t know something, but it’s somebody’s fault if you’ve been kept from knowing something. This subject sure as hell is going to come up a lot in the next months, and it would be nice if we were equipped with some real facts. Historians, alert! Please don't have conniptions! Please keep in mind...

04 Feb

Posted at 06:00h in Uncategorized

"Fetal assault. Chemical endangerment of a fetus. Manslaughter. Second-degree murder. Feticide. Child abuse. Reckless injury to a child. Concealing a birth. Concealing a death. Neglect of a minor. Reckless homicide. Attempted procurement of a miscarriage." These are charges being brought against some women for seeking or having had an abortion in some states in America today. The above list is a direct quote from the New York Times Special Section: Report on a Woman’s Right, dated January 20 of this year. The Times added, "More and more laws are treating the fetus as a person and the woman as less of one as states charge pregnant women with crimes." I’m glad and grateful that their editorial board actually gets it. In fact, if we are not both vigilant and active, we will be back at square one with women dying by the thousands every year in back-alley butchered abortions. Furthermore,...

28 Jan

Posted at 06:00h in Uncategorized

For the first time in the history of the Republic, a Speaker of the United States House of Representatives barred a President of the United States from entering the House.  In 1986, Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill refused to let President Reagan address the House before it voted on an aid package for the Contras, right-wing Nicaraguan rebels for whom Reagan hoped to persuade Congress to appropriate $100 million.  O’Neil offered a joint session with the Senate instead, but Reagan turned it down because he wanted to focus on the purse strings of the House. That’s the only time anything has happened remotely like what we’ve just witnessed. It’s worth repeating: For the first time in the history of the Republic, a Speaker of the United States House of Representatives barred a President of the United States from entering the House. This is completely within the rights of the Speaker’s power, since the...

21 Jan

Posted at 06:00h in Uncategorized

Nancy Patricia D'Alesandro Pelosi, age 78, married to the same man for more than 50 years, mother of five (five) children and grandmother of eight, may be the most strategically brilliant political leader since Elizabeth I (Tudor) of England. Both women went into the family business, although Thomas "Tommy" J. D'Alesandro, Jr., a Maryland congressman and then mayor of Baltimore, was not lethal to his (one) wife, unlike Henry VIII. Pelosi herself was the last of six children and the first daughter—who had to negotiate herself out of expectations that she would honor the family by becoming a nun. An activist behind the scenes in local Democratic politics while raising her own kids, she then ran for and was elected to Congress from California in 1987 and has served ever since, posting landslide electoral victories and dropping beneath 80 percent of the vote only twice. She made history being...

14 Jan

Posted at 06:00h in Uncategorized

Susan Zerinsky, age 66 and 5’1” tall, has just become the first woman to head the legendary CBS News division. Yes, that CBS News, as in Murrow and Cronkite, which once set the gold standard for broadcast journalism, of late severely tarnished by #MeToo scandals necessitating the firings of Charlie Rose and Les Moonves. Zerinsky came to CBS at age 20, worked her way up, has produced “48 Hours” for years, exercises seven days a week, boxes, lift weights, does Pilates, and has taken SLT classes because she heard they might make her taller. Of the sexual misconduct at CBS, she vigilantly declares, “#MeToo isn’t behind us, it’s part of us.” Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg is working from home since being released from the hospital after surgery for two malignant nodules on her left lung. She’s 85 and this was her third bout with cancer. She expects to be back on...

17 Dec

Posted at 06:00h in Uncategorized

COMPASS There’s a lost south in me, a place where joy,though costly, was a common middle name.Tomorrow, there, had elsewhere stayed today, solstices changed places, nothing was the same. There at the world’s edge, the antipodes,with all the stars and seasons rearranged,earth’s axis seemed to shift and gravity’sforce drew me in. My latitudes since then have changed. A lost love, like a phantom limb, gesturesemptily, making itself felt through pain.So ached this south in me for many years.But the world is round, and the lost self was regained once, seeking my own south, I ventured forthin due course, with due diligence, due north. "Compass" is from Dark Matter: New Poems by Robin Morgan, published earlier this year in the United States and the Commonwealth by Spinifex Press. Copyright 2018 by Robin Morgan. This blog will return on January 14, 2019. ...

10 Dec

Posted at 06:00h in Uncategorized

Warning: this is about nothing relevant—except reality. Poor reality, it's so threatened these days. Now, I am devoted to imagination and, as you may have gathered, quite a fan of the surreal and the supra real, though I’m not always sure what that last is. But I feel so bad for plain, poor reality. After the Age of Enlightenment, it seemed that human beings had promised reality a better future. And in our modern, rational society, many of us thought we had finally reached the point where reality was dismissed only by folks certain that a bearded old white guy on a gold throne in the clouds was their salvation, or else that drinking Kool-Aid would hasten a comet coming to bring them to another planet.  Alas, no. For us to have thought that was, well, unrealistic. There is a new so-called therapy gaining great popularity for use with people who have...

03 Dec

Posted at 06:00h in Uncategorized
Now that the U.S. House of Representatives is back in relatively sane hands, we can dare look to the future. That feels like a luxury, since we've been scrabbling for moment to moment survival.