The first spring-like weekend here has meant picking up trash from the shore and scraping the farmhouse for painting and carrying rowboats and walking with friends and seeing family and writing on my laptop outside on the sunny porch in the wind.
And thank you for connecting us all from the Atlantic to the Pacific and more. The photos you choose are always reflections of who you are and what you do!
Thank you for keeping everything going on around us in context. However, as an octogenarian I think that I can say there seem to be no limits to the evil the Trump supporters and and those complicit with them by silence are capable of accomplishing. This group have over time hi-jacked our courts up to the Supreme Court. Sam Alito, Clarence Thomas and Gorsuch, Barrett and Kavanaugh are willing to weaponize freedom of religion and with a Roberts/Alito states rights view that existed prior to the voting rights act of 1965 are enabling discrimination of the LGBTQ community and undermining the right to vote of people of color and citizens in urban centers of red states. They want a return to a rule by whites only straight citizens.
One small thing that’s consoled me, not hugely but not insignificantly either, is writing postcards for Reclaim Our Vote and the like. The message- ‘Your vote is needed’- that’s pretty cool.
My guess is the biggest effect might be seen in the special elections, the ones that are easier to forget when you’re busy raising a family and trying to do important and good work
Yes, Katherine…consoling for us…and not insignificant !
“ In 2020 volunteers for the Northeast Arizona Native Democrats sent over 18,000 postcards to voters on the Navajo, Hopi and White Mountain Apache Nations. That means volunteers sent postcards to EVERY Permanent Early Voting List (PEVL) voter, explaining to them how to make sure their vote counted. Their work paid off. We had a 300% increase in mail in ballots in 2020 over 2016 and yet only a tiny increase in ballots that needed corrections. We know this project increased the number of votes counted on tribal land and extended Biden’s victory in Arizona.”
Trump tried to stage a coup. In America. He tried to overturn an election and take power using the military. In the United States as if it were a third world country. This dangerous, criminal needs to be stopped by our judicial system This is not about politics. This is about the survival of our democracy. Any Trump supporter at this point, lacks any values that I support in our country. No friend of mine....not ever. Thank you for your balanced and intelligent discourse. A treasure.
We watched it in broad daylight, then watched the denying blather that would insult the intelligence of anything with two brain cells. Who said, “don’t believe your lying eyes.” Well, my eyes didn’t lie, neither did the video. Only republican vermin, over and over and over.
Clarence Thomas isn't white. Amy Coney Barrett isn't male. Neither Gorsuch nor Kavanaugh are old. Other than that your bigotry toward old white guys --like me --is obnoxious. aarhg , indeed !
I'm white (mostly, but a few percent Black), and I'm old enough to have been on Medicare for several years, which does feel like a privilege after paying well over $10k annually for my healthcare as a self employed writer.
Bigotry towards old white guys--immutable characteristics, as Paul Slater points out--is as bad as any other bigotry. And this is the kind of attitude that is not going to help us in the midterms--quite the contrary.
Money is much more indicative of privilege than melanin content of skin. And by focusing on skin color, you ignore the policies--all related to enabling the wealthy hoovering up even more of the dough--that account for the fact that the US is one of the most unequal among the industrialized Western nations.
The Trump tax cuts did not help all the old white guys who don't have enough money to deal with a major medical problem or a major car repair, or who are, or have family members caught in the opioid epidemic.
"Money is much more indicative of privilege than melanin content of skin."
Absolutely. Wealth disparity is the big divider. As long as big money can keep people divided by race, religion, gender, et al, they have little to worry about in terms of all people uniting to pursue justice for all.
"For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realize that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.”
I agree, money buys privilege. When I say that “if you are accustomed to privilege” I am not specifying any skin color, age, sex, etc. There are plenty of young men & women who are privileged but are unaware that they are, that they have opportunities not available to others, the money to move to another city, state, country, to go to a private school, or college, to buy clothes without worrying about the price, to go to the dentist, to the doctor, buy needed medications or glasses, to wonder if there is enough money for groceries, to buy a car so you don’t have to walk or ride a bike to your job or school, & the list goes on. When this privilege is pointed out to a person, often they feel they are being picked on for something they have no control over. It’s true that you don’t have control over being born with a silver spoon, but you need to be aware that you have this privilege that not everyone has had, & act accordingly.
Mr. Holzman, please don’t take my little observation personally, as it was not directed to you or all “old white guys”, but to those who are unaware.
Privilege has everything to do with money regardless of color.
And as for being a few percent Black, to look at my maternal grandmother and my mother, you could see the African, and I had quite the Afro until aging loosened the curls in my hair.
David Reich of the Harvard Medical School, the guy who led the study finding that modern H. sapiens have some Neanderthal, also found that all Ashkenazi Jews have a few percent African from mixing that took place around 2000 years ago. My mother and grandmother probably had more than most.
Denigrating the content of one’s actions or thought based on immutable characteristics such as the color of one’s skin or the date of one’s birth is not even remotely related to equality and vague references to “privilege “ do not change that .
LOL. Of the 115 justices, 110 (95.7%) have been men. All Supreme Court justices were males until 1981. Those who have stepped down since 1970 have served an average of 25.6 years. The retirement age had jumped from an average of 68 pre-1970 to 79 for justices retiring post-1970. All Supreme Court justices were white and of European heritage until the appointment of Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American Justice, in 1967. Since then, only two other non-white justices have been appointed: Marshall's African-American successor, Clarence Thomas, in 1991, and Latina Justice Sonia Sotomayor in 2009.
Pretty sure you understood (like many of us) that Janey was referencing “patriarchy”, not just any individual curmudgeon.
“Most historians who choose to use the word "patriarchy" emphasize that despite their ubiquity, patriarchal systems have taken widely varied forms. Male assertions of power over women, children, and dependent men have involved physical force, legal sanctions, intellectual structures, religious systems, economic privileges, social institutions, and cultural norms. Thus patriarchy does have a history, and social historians have been particularly active in investigating the changing construction of patriarchy and the responses of women and men to it. Most investigations of that history in Western cultures concentrate on three periods, which will thus be the primary topics of this article: the origins of patriarchy in antiquity, the explicit institutionalization of a father-centered patriarchy in western Europe during the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries, and the challenges to that patriarchy by the liberal revolutions of the late eighteenth century and radical social movements of the nineteenth century. Because patriarchal configurations of power were less explicitly a matter of concern in the Middle Ages than they were in the early modern period, most medieval historians have not felt compelled to make them a specific focus of investigation. Historians of the twentieth century tend either to use the term without explicating or defining it, or to avoid it altogether, although some investigations of authoritarian regimes that made extensive use of father imagery—such as Hitler's Germany, Mussolini's Italy, and Stalin's Soviet Union—do label these as patriarchal and explore the consequences of this ideology.” https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences-and-law/anthropology-and-archaeology/anthropology-terms-and-concepts/patriarchy
Christy, thank you for the in formative response. Actually, I did not read Janey’s comment as referring to patriarchy as opposed to patriarchs —i.e. old white men. In that context, the fact that 20th Century historians have referred to Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini as examples of father figure patriarchs does little to make me feel that the fascicle dismissal of ones views as a patriarch or as an old white man is benign.
Paul, you are missing the insidiously operative institution of racism and its flip side of institutionalized privilege for having been born with white skin. That privilege exempts white people from many forms of discrimination and oppression on the path to a comfortable life. White supremacy and authoritarianism are about maintaining and expanding that power, privilege, and wealth.
As others have said, it’s not about you personally or about exceptions to the rule. Read or watch a video on the book, White Fragility.
Ellie-- I do not dispute nor do I think I am missing the existence of racism. But I am 77, white and male. Epithets casually tossed at "old white men" quite literally encompass me and millions of other old white grandfathers, regardless of our views or the way we have lead our lives. I do not believe that it is acceptable to judge people based on immutable characteristics. History taught us long ago that using race as criteria leads to the ugliest of human behavior. And , I wonder why so many, who would otherwise agree with me, find it acceptable to cling to a pejorative and generalized categorization when it is directed at old , white men. Another respondent in this chain, has suggested that I am being overly sensitive and that the criticism of old white men is not directed at me. Perhaps she is right, but given the generality of the categorization , how would I or any other reader know ?
Check if the shoe fits. If it does you probably won’t want to admit it. If it doesn’t fit just keep doing the good you’re already doing. Anger is an important feeling to listen to. Sometimes we’re too quick to direct it in the wrong direction. Maybe some well placed anger at Clarence Thomas, the rapist Kavanaugh, Moscow Mitch, the Koch brothers, Rupert Murdoch, lying Bill Barr, the murderer GW, the genocidal monster Vlad Putin etc etc would lessen your reaction to women trying to be heard and taken seriously for once. 🤷🏻♀️ Maybe not.
You have identified some worthy villains. Gorsuch, Alito and certainly Kevin McCarthy should be added to the list. Perhaps you can understand my chagrin at being presumptively included in such company. I wonder also why I am suspected of not taking women seriously due only to my age and the color of my skin.
Good thing I have known some wonderful old, straight, white guys who have been appalled by the privilege that is expected and approved by most.. I salute them as I acknowledge the truth from Thomas…
I live in Florida (you probably don’t need me to say that), grew up here & actually like living here. Florida has a reputation as a state full of people who make headline news, & not in a good way. I can’t argue with that. There are a lot of Trump supporters here, & our present Governor is modeling himself after a mix of Trump & Putin. Every day someone says let Florida secede from the USA! & why don’t they vote out DeSantis! & I take umbrage at these remarks & start grumbling & worse, but then I calm myself down & think that this person is just upset, this is not directed at me, but at those ignorant people who believe the lies fed to them. Neither I nor my friends voted for DeSantis nor Trump. The unhappy tweeters probably don’t know that the Governor’s race was so close that there was a mandatory recount. So I move on, knowing they speak in generalities.
Jean — thanks for note. You are probably right and I am probably overly sensitive . It turns out that I am not only old and white , but reasonably well off to boot. As a result, during political discussions, I frequently find myself questioning how it is that I became the bad guy.
If trump was a wealthy, old, black lesbian, would the anger toward him remain the same? Or would sympathies be extended to him/her for each of the minority statuses he/she represented?
Discrimination is discrimination, no matter the race, gender, orientation, et al. The road to national recovery begins with economic justice for all.
And the question Macron asked during his victory speech applies just as well in America.
“An answer must be found to the anger and disagreements that led many of our compatriots to vote for the extreme right," Macron declared during a victory speech at the Eiffel Tower. "The task is to reunite. It will be my responsibility and that of those around me."
It is a difficult one. I believe it requires our care and concern for each other irrespective of race, color, creed , gender or sexual orientation. That takes a great deal of continuous hard work and means setting aside many in-born prejudices and mistaken beliefs many times decades old. I fail often but try over and over again. Unless we succeed at this we will never reunite.
Peace and unity in America will require that both the hardcore Progressives and the hardcore Conservatives willingly move towards the center where the vast majority of Americans live.
A good start would be if the hardcore Conservatives & Donald J. Trump would admit that Biden won the presidency and there was no massive fraud in the 2020 election that would have changed the outcome.
By my America I simply meant we took Democracy for granted. Many people got pensions. Kids graduating college didn't have to live at home after. Now I fear the future is very scary because republicans across the country are destroying voting rights and if that doesn't work, just steal the election. In my America Climate Disruption wasn't the threat the younger generation is facing. So much has changed, and civility seems lost in many ways. I see people being rude, violence increasing. I have 3 grandsons and think about this a lot, not just for them, but all the younger people, I am quite old! I so enjoy having access to this exchange of ideas and information...it is the best thing, thank you Heather Cox Richardson.
Thank you for replying ~ I have three grandsons too and as a wife, mother and daughter of military service members, I have never taken democracy for granted. What’s happening in our country is scary, but it isn’t new. The desire for equity and change is what is making it uglier. I’d like to think there are more of us that are “not” a part of the ugly but what is happening in our country now is heartbreaking 💔
Something about the clean outdoor air. You more than Deserve a good rest! Thanks for the photo, and all your letters and commentary. You are the news and sanity with which I start every morning.
As the country gets closer to its defining moments your letters are as cut diamonds. I cannot imagine another writer portraying America with more clarity. Thank you, HCR.
God Could Not Make Her a Poet
Cornelius Eady - 1954-
'Thomas Jefferson said this, more or less,
After he read the musings of the clever African
Phillis Wheatley, a sensation of both the Colonies
'Born on January 7, 1954, Cornelius Eady was raised in Rochester, New York. He attended Monroe Community College and Empire State College.'
'He is the author of several collections of poetry, including Hardheaded Weather (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2008); Brutal Imagination (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2001), which was a finalist for the 2001 National Book Award in Poetry; The Gathering of My Name (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1991), which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize; and Victims of the Latest Dance Craze (Ommation Press, 1986), which was chosen by Louise Glück, Charles Simic, and Philip Booth for the 1985 Lamont Poetry Selection of The Academy of American Poets.'
'In 1996, Eady and the poet Toi Derricotte founded Cave Canem, a nonprofit organization serving Black poets of various backgrounds and acting as a safe space for intellectual engagement and critical debate. Along with Derricotte, he also edited Gathering Ground (University of Michigan Press, 2006). In 2016, she and Eady accepted the National Book Foundation’s Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community on behalf of Cave Canem.'
'He has collaborated with jazz composer Deidre Murray in the production of several works of musical theater, including You Don’t Miss Your Water; Running Man, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 1999; Fangs, and Brutal Imagination, which received Newsday’s Oppenheimer Award in 2002.'
'About his work, the poet June Jordan has said, “Cornelius Eady leads and then cuts a line like no one else: following the laughter and the compassionate pith of a dauntless imagination, these poems beeline or zig-zag always to the jugular, the dramatic and unarguable revelation of the heart.”
'Eady is currently a professor in the MFA program at SUNY Stony Brook Southampton (Academy of American Poets)
Your words, Fern McBride, “As the country gets closer to its defining moments your letters are as cut diamonds. I cannot imagine another writer portraying America with more clarity. “ Beautiful description of the power of language, from history and from Heather’s letters, all windows to past and future, connecting to how we will process the troubled times before us. And at the same time, recognize the gifts.
Which deck thy progress through the vaulted skies:
The morn awakes, and wide extends her rays,
On ev’ry leaf the gentle zephyr plays;
Harmonious lays the feather’d race resume,
Dart the bright eye, and shake the painted plume.
Ye shady groves, your verdant gloom display
To shield your poet from the burning day:
Calliope awake the sacred lyre,
While thy fair sisters fan the pleasing fire:
The bow’rs, the gales, the variegated skies
In all their pleasures in my bosom rise.
See in the east th’ illustrious king of day!
His rising radiance drives the shades away—
But Oh! I feel his fervid beams too strong,
And scarce begun, concludes th’ abortive song.
…..
'When Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral by Phillis Wheatley was published in 1773, it marked several significant accomplishments. It was the first book by a slave to be published in the Colonies, and only the third book by a woman in the American colonies to be published.'
'Phillis (not her original name) was brought to the North America in 1761 as part of the slave trade from Senegal/Gambia. She was purchased from the slave market by John Wheatley of Boston, as a personal servant to his wife, Susanna. She was given the surname of the family, as was customary at the time.'
'Still just a child when she was made a house slave to the Wheatleys, Phillis displayed impressive intellectual ability. Susanna had her educated along with their daughters, and within a short time, Phillis she was able to read the Bible and write English fluently. This was all the more significant at a time when slaves were discouraged from learning to read and write, if not altogether forbidden.' (LiteraryLadiesGuide) See link below.'
I looked her up after reading Eady's poem 'God Could Not Make Her a Poet'. which startled me. Both poems, for different reasons, have rich lessons within and around them.
Susan, I go to Google, enter the name of the person I want to know more about or the category, such as 'poem' or ;poems' in this case. Top of the Monday morning to you,
There are so many poets and so many subjects, I would rather take recommendations from people whose thinking I admire. So, I thank you for narrowing down the choices.
Enjoy your evening and your sleep. Thank you again for sharing your insights and your history lessons. Really appreciate that you’re posting earlier in the evening.
I value your photos & messages almost as much as your acute analyses & historical perspective. Thank you for your devotion to illuminating the struggle for democracy that we are in. Charmaine H.
Thank you for all you do, you deserve a restful night! Despite the mess the world often seems to be in, I'm rejoicing tonight that my birth country showed some sense by electing Macron, and avoiding someone like Le Pen, who fits right in with Putin and Trump...the world is better for her defeat!
I've never followed a French election so closely like this one. And I'm not alone. While weeding next to the sidewalk this evening, a very old woman (84, I learned later) was gingerly walking by me with the aid of a cane. She stopped to talk. Politics, naturally, came up. I told her about Macron's huge victory, and she was thrilled. Just then a neighbor I recognize but don't know was walking passed. "Did I hear you correctly?" she asked. Yes, I said, Macron won big. She replied, "Thank, God."
Thank you for posting that, I too have been working in the yard for the last several weeks, the work I put in now will pay off big time this summer or so I hope anyhow, to that end I never saw the news today. The news from France 🇫🇷 means we have one less thing to worry about, now if we can just do the same in the midterms and the general…….🙏🇺🇦
At an orchestra rehearsal yesterday evening in Brussels people were checking their cell phones more than usual. All of a sudden the lower woodwind players began to sing "l'Internationale," other voices intoned some lines of La Marseillaise. We all breathed a sigh of relief, though most of the members are other than French.
I am so thrilled about Macron's victory tonight! Although alone when the news was announced, I cheered and waved my arms around like a drunken sailor in a bar. Praise be to the French electorate!
I love your birth country as if it were mine. To me, any other result would have been disastrous. I was there in 2002, at the huge march entre-les-deux-tours, to make sure her father didn't accidentally get elected.
I was at a meeting yesterday with my fellow Democrats in our newly drawn state Senate District here in MN. We were waiting for our U. S. Rep, Angie Craig, who was a bit late so we were just chatting amongst ourselves. There were a few people looking at their phones and when the announcement was made that Macron had won, the room just erupted in whoops and applause! C’est magnifique was the general consensus in the room.
Such a simple forest, compared with our tropical rainforest tangle - big tree came down last night, narrowly missing our bat cage! Maybe our natural tangle makes it easier to appreciate our increasingly difficult cultural tangles.
Enjoy a nite of solitude and thank you for your informative commentaries and opinions. They provide great help in understanding the issues of the day. I look forward to your posts…
Thank you for your tireless work
And thank you for connecting us all from the Atlantic to the Pacific and more. The photos you choose are always reflections of who you are and what you do!
You have been a steady and calm voice in a turbulent ocean for several years. I appreciate and am grateful. Thank you, be well.
Thank you for keeping everything going on around us in context. However, as an octogenarian I think that I can say there seem to be no limits to the evil the Trump supporters and and those complicit with them by silence are capable of accomplishing. This group have over time hi-jacked our courts up to the Supreme Court. Sam Alito, Clarence Thomas and Gorsuch, Barrett and Kavanaugh are willing to weaponize freedom of religion and with a Roberts/Alito states rights view that existed prior to the voting rights act of 1965 are enabling discrimination of the LGBTQ community and undermining the right to vote of people of color and citizens in urban centers of red states. They want a return to a rule by whites only straight citizens.
One small thing that’s consoled me, not hugely but not insignificantly either, is writing postcards for Reclaim Our Vote and the like. The message- ‘Your vote is needed’- that’s pretty cool.
Have friends who do this. Can other HCR fans advise us how these cards are perceived on the ground in states like Georgia?
Some info here: https://demcastusa.com/2021/05/12/yes-postcards-to-voters-do-boost-interest-and-turnout/
My guess is the biggest effect might be seen in the special elections, the ones that are easier to forget when you’re busy raising a family and trying to do important and good work
Katherine, glad you mentioned postcarding. I do it — inexpensive and fun.
Christy, thank you for the link confirming my feeling about writing.
💙💙
Me too AshleyR, Receiving hand written postcards seems to ALWAYS bring me joy so I’m hoping I’m sharing some lightness 😁
Primaries as well, is my guess. thanks for posting link!
Yes!!! Primaries!! 💯💯💯
300 % increase in mail in ballots !
Yes, Katherine…consoling for us…and not insignificant !
“ In 2020 volunteers for the Northeast Arizona Native Democrats sent over 18,000 postcards to voters on the Navajo, Hopi and White Mountain Apache Nations. That means volunteers sent postcards to EVERY Permanent Early Voting List (PEVL) voter, explaining to them how to make sure their vote counted. Their work paid off. We had a 300% increase in mail in ballots in 2020 over 2016 and yet only a tiny increase in ballots that needed corrections. We know this project increased the number of votes counted on tribal land and extended Biden’s victory in Arizona.”
https://www.mobilize.us/mobilize/event/428361/
'Your voice is needed,' I meant to write- close cousin of 'your vote..' but a bit of a broader message
Trump tried to stage a coup. In America. He tried to overturn an election and take power using the military. In the United States as if it were a third world country. This dangerous, criminal needs to be stopped by our judicial system This is not about politics. This is about the survival of our democracy. Any Trump supporter at this point, lacks any values that I support in our country. No friend of mine....not ever. Thank you for your balanced and intelligent discourse. A treasure.
We watched it in broad daylight, then watched the denying blather that would insult the intelligence of anything with two brain cells. Who said, “don’t believe your lying eyes.” Well, my eyes didn’t lie, neither did the video. Only republican vermin, over and over and over.
"This dangerous, criminal needs to be stopped by our judicial system"
Penelope: Do....Not......Hold....Your.....Breath......Waiting..........
You forget men only. Straight white old guys aaarhg!
Clarence Thomas isn't white. Amy Coney Barrett isn't male. Neither Gorsuch nor Kavanaugh are old. Other than that your bigotry toward old white guys --like me --is obnoxious. aarhg , indeed !
When you are accustomed to privilege, equality seems like oppression.
I'm white (mostly, but a few percent Black), and I'm old enough to have been on Medicare for several years, which does feel like a privilege after paying well over $10k annually for my healthcare as a self employed writer.
Bigotry towards old white guys--immutable characteristics, as Paul Slater points out--is as bad as any other bigotry. And this is the kind of attitude that is not going to help us in the midterms--quite the contrary.
Money is much more indicative of privilege than melanin content of skin. And by focusing on skin color, you ignore the policies--all related to enabling the wealthy hoovering up even more of the dough--that account for the fact that the US is one of the most unequal among the industrialized Western nations.
The Trump tax cuts did not help all the old white guys who don't have enough money to deal with a major medical problem or a major car repair, or who are, or have family members caught in the opioid epidemic.
"Money is much more indicative of privilege than melanin content of skin."
Absolutely. Wealth disparity is the big divider. As long as big money can keep people divided by race, religion, gender, et al, they have little to worry about in terms of all people uniting to pursue justice for all.
One of my many Orwell quotes.
"For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realize that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.”
George Orwell, 1984
I agree, money buys privilege. When I say that “if you are accustomed to privilege” I am not specifying any skin color, age, sex, etc. There are plenty of young men & women who are privileged but are unaware that they are, that they have opportunities not available to others, the money to move to another city, state, country, to go to a private school, or college, to buy clothes without worrying about the price, to go to the dentist, to the doctor, buy needed medications or glasses, to wonder if there is enough money for groceries, to buy a car so you don’t have to walk or ride a bike to your job or school, & the list goes on. When this privilege is pointed out to a person, often they feel they are being picked on for something they have no control over. It’s true that you don’t have control over being born with a silver spoon, but you need to be aware that you have this privilege that not everyone has had, & act accordingly.
Mr. Holzman, please don’t take my little observation personally, as it was not directed to you or all “old white guys”, but to those who are unaware.
“I’m white mostly, but a few percent Black” ~ what? White privilege has nothing to do with money. The End.
Privilege has everything to do with money regardless of color.
And as for being a few percent Black, to look at my maternal grandmother and my mother, you could see the African, and I had quite the Afro until aging loosened the curls in my hair.
David Reich of the Harvard Medical School, the guy who led the study finding that modern H. sapiens have some Neanderthal, also found that all Ashkenazi Jews have a few percent African from mixing that took place around 2000 years ago. My mother and grandmother probably had more than most.
Denigrating the content of one’s actions or thought based on immutable characteristics such as the color of one’s skin or the date of one’s birth is not even remotely related to equality and vague references to “privilege “ do not change that .
Thank you! Now let us wait for all those with privilege to scream...
YES
Brilliant! Going to share today. Thank you.
LOL. Of the 115 justices, 110 (95.7%) have been men. All Supreme Court justices were males until 1981. Those who have stepped down since 1970 have served an average of 25.6 years. The retirement age had jumped from an average of 68 pre-1970 to 79 for justices retiring post-1970. All Supreme Court justices were white and of European heritage until the appointment of Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American Justice, in 1967. Since then, only two other non-white justices have been appointed: Marshall's African-American successor, Clarence Thomas, in 1991, and Latina Justice Sonia Sotomayor in 2009.
Amurca. The bootiful.
Well informed, thank you
You’re welcome! Swimming in our current sea of hyperbole, lies, & deceit, I find it very steadying to look for facts. 😊
😣
It's always assumed that there are exceptions when one is generalizing.
Pretty sure you understood (like many of us) that Janey was referencing “patriarchy”, not just any individual curmudgeon.
“Most historians who choose to use the word "patriarchy" emphasize that despite their ubiquity, patriarchal systems have taken widely varied forms. Male assertions of power over women, children, and dependent men have involved physical force, legal sanctions, intellectual structures, religious systems, economic privileges, social institutions, and cultural norms. Thus patriarchy does have a history, and social historians have been particularly active in investigating the changing construction of patriarchy and the responses of women and men to it. Most investigations of that history in Western cultures concentrate on three periods, which will thus be the primary topics of this article: the origins of patriarchy in antiquity, the explicit institutionalization of a father-centered patriarchy in western Europe during the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries, and the challenges to that patriarchy by the liberal revolutions of the late eighteenth century and radical social movements of the nineteenth century. Because patriarchal configurations of power were less explicitly a matter of concern in the Middle Ages than they were in the early modern period, most medieval historians have not felt compelled to make them a specific focus of investigation. Historians of the twentieth century tend either to use the term without explicating or defining it, or to avoid it altogether, although some investigations of authoritarian regimes that made extensive use of father imagery—such as Hitler's Germany, Mussolini's Italy, and Stalin's Soviet Union—do label these as patriarchal and explore the consequences of this ideology.” https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences-and-law/anthropology-and-archaeology/anthropology-terms-and-concepts/patriarchy
Christy, thank you for the in formative response. Actually, I did not read Janey’s comment as referring to patriarchy as opposed to patriarchs —i.e. old white men. In that context, the fact that 20th Century historians have referred to Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini as examples of father figure patriarchs does little to make me feel that the fascicle dismissal of ones views as a patriarch or as an old white man is benign.
Paul, you are missing the insidiously operative institution of racism and its flip side of institutionalized privilege for having been born with white skin. That privilege exempts white people from many forms of discrimination and oppression on the path to a comfortable life. White supremacy and authoritarianism are about maintaining and expanding that power, privilege, and wealth.
As others have said, it’s not about you personally or about exceptions to the rule. Read or watch a video on the book, White Fragility.
https://youtu.be/45ey4jgoxeU
Ellie-- I do not dispute nor do I think I am missing the existence of racism. But I am 77, white and male. Epithets casually tossed at "old white men" quite literally encompass me and millions of other old white grandfathers, regardless of our views or the way we have lead our lives. I do not believe that it is acceptable to judge people based on immutable characteristics. History taught us long ago that using race as criteria leads to the ugliest of human behavior. And , I wonder why so many, who would otherwise agree with me, find it acceptable to cling to a pejorative and generalized categorization when it is directed at old , white men. Another respondent in this chain, has suggested that I am being overly sensitive and that the criticism of old white men is not directed at me. Perhaps she is right, but given the generality of the categorization , how would I or any other reader know ?
Check if the shoe fits. If it does you probably won’t want to admit it. If it doesn’t fit just keep doing the good you’re already doing. Anger is an important feeling to listen to. Sometimes we’re too quick to direct it in the wrong direction. Maybe some well placed anger at Clarence Thomas, the rapist Kavanaugh, Moscow Mitch, the Koch brothers, Rupert Murdoch, lying Bill Barr, the murderer GW, the genocidal monster Vlad Putin etc etc would lessen your reaction to women trying to be heard and taken seriously for once. 🤷🏻♀️ Maybe not.
You have identified some worthy villains. Gorsuch, Alito and certainly Kevin McCarthy should be added to the list. Perhaps you can understand my chagrin at being presumptively included in such company. I wonder also why I am suspected of not taking women seriously due only to my age and the color of my skin.
The money angle, Industrial Era robber barons:
https://twitter.com/shanlonwu/status/1518687996597440512?s=21&t=HAXDnKFrhAp7lKCqqJnPKA
speaking from experience, writing when upset, which we all are, it doesn't come out perfect. Rarely meant to be mean spirited.
Good thing I have known some wonderful old, straight, white guys who have been appalled by the privilege that is expected and approved by most.. I salute them as I acknowledge the truth from Thomas…
You are who is obnoxious. Shame on you. This woman is not a bigot in any stretch of the imagination.
Really ? Denigrating an entire class of people based on the color of their skin and the date of their birth is not bigotry ?
I live in Florida (you probably don’t need me to say that), grew up here & actually like living here. Florida has a reputation as a state full of people who make headline news, & not in a good way. I can’t argue with that. There are a lot of Trump supporters here, & our present Governor is modeling himself after a mix of Trump & Putin. Every day someone says let Florida secede from the USA! & why don’t they vote out DeSantis! & I take umbrage at these remarks & start grumbling & worse, but then I calm myself down & think that this person is just upset, this is not directed at me, but at those ignorant people who believe the lies fed to them. Neither I nor my friends voted for DeSantis nor Trump. The unhappy tweeters probably don’t know that the Governor’s race was so close that there was a mandatory recount. So I move on, knowing they speak in generalities.
Jean — thanks for note. You are probably right and I am probably overly sensitive . It turns out that I am not only old and white , but reasonably well off to boot. As a result, during political discussions, I frequently find myself questioning how it is that I became the bad guy.
Clarence Thomas had his invite to the BBQ revoked a long time ago.
😂👏
If trump was a wealthy, old, black lesbian, would the anger toward him remain the same? Or would sympathies be extended to him/her for each of the minority statuses he/she represented?
Discrimination is discrimination, no matter the race, gender, orientation, et al. The road to national recovery begins with economic justice for all.
Thomas Heyman, spoken like a disciple of Hannah Arendt, Timothy Snyder, Thomas Paine, Ben Franklin, and dozens more.
And the question Macron asked during his victory speech applies just as well in America.
“An answer must be found to the anger and disagreements that led many of our compatriots to vote for the extreme right," Macron declared during a victory speech at the Eiffel Tower. "The task is to reunite. It will be my responsibility and that of those around me."
What is the answer?
It is a difficult one. I believe it requires our care and concern for each other irrespective of race, color, creed , gender or sexual orientation. That takes a great deal of continuous hard work and means setting aside many in-born prejudices and mistaken beliefs many times decades old. I fail often but try over and over again. Unless we succeed at this we will never reunite.
Peace and unity in America will require that both the hardcore Progressives and the hardcore Conservatives willingly move towards the center where the vast majority of Americans live.
Not a likely event.
A good start would be if the hardcore Conservatives & Donald J. Trump would admit that Biden won the presidency and there was no massive fraud in the 2020 election that would have changed the outcome.
Very well said. You hit the nail on the head.
I feel my America has been lost to the younger generation...hate is prevailing
What is your America like? In my America I think hate prevails because of older generations not the younger.
By my America I simply meant we took Democracy for granted. Many people got pensions. Kids graduating college didn't have to live at home after. Now I fear the future is very scary because republicans across the country are destroying voting rights and if that doesn't work, just steal the election. In my America Climate Disruption wasn't the threat the younger generation is facing. So much has changed, and civility seems lost in many ways. I see people being rude, violence increasing. I have 3 grandsons and think about this a lot, not just for them, but all the younger people, I am quite old! I so enjoy having access to this exchange of ideas and information...it is the best thing, thank you Heather Cox Richardson.
Thank you for replying ~ I have three grandsons too and as a wife, mother and daughter of military service members, I have never taken democracy for granted. What’s happening in our country is scary, but it isn’t new. The desire for equity and change is what is making it uglier. I’d like to think there are more of us that are “not” a part of the ugly but what is happening in our country now is heartbreaking 💔
Something about the clean outdoor air. You more than Deserve a good rest! Thanks for the photo, and all your letters and commentary. You are the news and sanity with which I start every morning.
As the country gets closer to its defining moments your letters are as cut diamonds. I cannot imagine another writer portraying America with more clarity. Thank you, HCR.
God Could Not Make Her a Poet
Cornelius Eady - 1954-
'Thomas Jefferson said this, more or less,
After he read the musings of the clever African
Phillis Wheatley, a sensation of both the Colonies
And England, a black patriot, though a slave.
Whatever a black hand can build, he knew,
Could only be guided by a master’s vision,
Like this room of the mansion he probably
Wrote his opinion in—what black mind could
Dream in these proportions? And gather
The slope of these Virginia hills so lovingly
To his window? God could give her words,
But the subtle turn? Like giving a gull
A sack of gold.'
Copyright © 2022 by Cornelius Eady. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on February 24, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.
'Born on January 7, 1954, Cornelius Eady was raised in Rochester, New York. He attended Monroe Community College and Empire State College.'
'He is the author of several collections of poetry, including Hardheaded Weather (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2008); Brutal Imagination (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2001), which was a finalist for the 2001 National Book Award in Poetry; The Gathering of My Name (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1991), which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize; and Victims of the Latest Dance Craze (Ommation Press, 1986), which was chosen by Louise Glück, Charles Simic, and Philip Booth for the 1985 Lamont Poetry Selection of The Academy of American Poets.'
'In 1996, Eady and the poet Toi Derricotte founded Cave Canem, a nonprofit organization serving Black poets of various backgrounds and acting as a safe space for intellectual engagement and critical debate. Along with Derricotte, he also edited Gathering Ground (University of Michigan Press, 2006). In 2016, she and Eady accepted the National Book Foundation’s Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community on behalf of Cave Canem.'
'He has collaborated with jazz composer Deidre Murray in the production of several works of musical theater, including You Don’t Miss Your Water; Running Man, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 1999; Fangs, and Brutal Imagination, which received Newsday’s Oppenheimer Award in 2002.'
'About his work, the poet June Jordan has said, “Cornelius Eady leads and then cuts a line like no one else: following the laughter and the compassionate pith of a dauntless imagination, these poems beeline or zig-zag always to the jugular, the dramatic and unarguable revelation of the heart.”
'Eady is currently a professor in the MFA program at SUNY Stony Brook Southampton (Academy of American Poets)
Your words, Fern McBride, “As the country gets closer to its defining moments your letters are as cut diamonds. I cannot imagine another writer portraying America with more clarity. “ Beautiful description of the power of language, from history and from Heather’s letters, all windows to past and future, connecting to how we will process the troubled times before us. And at the same time, recognize the gifts.
Beautifully said.
Irenie, so well said!!
Oh my goodness! What a lovely message! ♥️
An Hymn to the Morning
by Phillis Wheatley
ATTEND my lays, ye ever honour’d nine,
Assist my labours, and my strains refine;
In smoothest numbers pour the notes along,
For bright Aurora now demands my song.
Aurora hail, and all the thousand dies,
Which deck thy progress through the vaulted skies:
The morn awakes, and wide extends her rays,
On ev’ry leaf the gentle zephyr plays;
Harmonious lays the feather’d race resume,
Dart the bright eye, and shake the painted plume.
Ye shady groves, your verdant gloom display
To shield your poet from the burning day:
Calliope awake the sacred lyre,
While thy fair sisters fan the pleasing fire:
The bow’rs, the gales, the variegated skies
In all their pleasures in my bosom rise.
See in the east th’ illustrious king of day!
His rising radiance drives the shades away—
But Oh! I feel his fervid beams too strong,
And scarce begun, concludes th’ abortive song.
…..
'When Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral by Phillis Wheatley was published in 1773, it marked several significant accomplishments. It was the first book by a slave to be published in the Colonies, and only the third book by a woman in the American colonies to be published.'
'Phillis (not her original name) was brought to the North America in 1761 as part of the slave trade from Senegal/Gambia. She was purchased from the slave market by John Wheatley of Boston, as a personal servant to his wife, Susanna. She was given the surname of the family, as was customary at the time.'
'Still just a child when she was made a house slave to the Wheatleys, Phillis displayed impressive intellectual ability. Susanna had her educated along with their daughters, and within a short time, Phillis she was able to read the Bible and write English fluently. This was all the more significant at a time when slaves were discouraged from learning to read and write, if not altogether forbidden.' (LiteraryLadiesGuide) See link below.'
https://www.literaryladiesguide.com/classic-women-authors-poetry/10-poems-by-phillis-wheatley-from-poems-on-various-subjects-religious-and-moral-1773/
A staggeringly beautiful poem. Poetry like this should be taught instead of just the traditional stuff we were fed in school
I looked her up after reading Eady's poem 'God Could Not Make Her a Poet'. which startled me. Both poems, for different reasons, have rich lessons within and around them.
Thank you, Fern, for these resources. I wouldn't know where to begin to look for them.
Susan, I go to Google, enter the name of the person I want to know more about or the category, such as 'poem' or ;poems' in this case. Top of the Monday morning to you,
There are so many poets and so many subjects, I would rather take recommendations from people whose thinking I admire. So, I thank you for narrowing down the choices.
Thank you, Susan. I think these two poems very worthwhile to spend time with. I am not an expert and only reflect what has meaning to me.
Phillis Wheatly was such a tragic figure. . They trotted her around and she died in poverty.
😔
Dear Fern, thank you for the literary gifts, your own and those you’ve shared with us here 🕊💎❣️
Thank you, Ashley. I am very happy to have found these two poems. They will stay close.
Beautiful, and poignant. Thank You Fern.
Thank you, MaryPat. Top of Monday morning,. 🗽
Top o' the Monday Mornin' to you, too, Fern!!💚
🎶🌞🦋
Beautiful. Rest. We’ll look for you tomorrow.
Enjoy your evening and your sleep. Thank you again for sharing your insights and your history lessons. Really appreciate that you’re posting earlier in the evening.
I value your photos & messages almost as much as your acute analyses & historical perspective. Thank you for your devotion to illuminating the struggle for democracy that we are in. Charmaine H.
Heather, you have been a beacon in the fog for me! Thank you!!!
Thank you for all you do, you deserve a restful night! Despite the mess the world often seems to be in, I'm rejoicing tonight that my birth country showed some sense by electing Macron, and avoiding someone like Le Pen, who fits right in with Putin and Trump...the world is better for her defeat!
I've never followed a French election so closely like this one. And I'm not alone. While weeding next to the sidewalk this evening, a very old woman (84, I learned later) was gingerly walking by me with the aid of a cane. She stopped to talk. Politics, naturally, came up. I told her about Macron's huge victory, and she was thrilled. Just then a neighbor I recognize but don't know was walking passed. "Did I hear you correctly?" she asked. Yes, I said, Macron won big. She replied, "Thank, God."
Thank you for posting that, I too have been working in the yard for the last several weeks, the work I put in now will pay off big time this summer or so I hope anyhow, to that end I never saw the news today. The news from France 🇫🇷 means we have one less thing to worry about, now if we can just do the same in the midterms and the general…….🙏🇺🇦
Definitely. I read somewhere that Macron's favorability ratings were similar to Biden's.
At an orchestra rehearsal yesterday evening in Brussels people were checking their cell phones more than usual. All of a sudden the lower woodwind players began to sing "l'Internationale," other voices intoned some lines of La Marseillaise. We all breathed a sigh of relief, though most of the members are other than French.
I am so thrilled about Macron's victory tonight! Although alone when the news was announced, I cheered and waved my arms around like a drunken sailor in a bar. Praise be to the French electorate!
If France can defeat extremists, America can, too.
They don't like tfg either, even less a female ash-blonde imitation of tfg.
At least she’s not orange, but just as toxic…
I love your birth country as if it were mine. To me, any other result would have been disastrous. I was there in 2002, at the huge march entre-les-deux-tours, to make sure her father didn't accidentally get elected.
I was at a meeting yesterday with my fellow Democrats in our newly drawn state Senate District here in MN. We were waiting for our U. S. Rep, Angie Craig, who was a bit late so we were just chatting amongst ourselves. There were a few people looking at their phones and when the announcement was made that Macron had won, the room just erupted in whoops and applause! C’est magnifique was the general consensus in the room.
Rest well! You are appreciated and loved!
Such a simple forest, compared with our tropical rainforest tangle - big tree came down last night, narrowly missing our bat cage! Maybe our natural tangle makes it easier to appreciate our increasingly difficult cultural tangles.
For me it does.
Enjoy a nite of solitude and thank you for your informative commentaries and opinions. They provide great help in understanding the issues of the day. I look forward to your posts…
Have a restful evening…you deserve it!
Sweet Dreams!
I hope you enjoyed your trip to my state. I love living on the coast- you’re East I’m West
Me too! I was East but oh my the West. ❤️
Kathey - My State as well! 😊🎶