Category: Uncategorized
-
Egyptian women
Egyptian women were weavers and grinders of grain. However, a few women were listed as overseers and “sealers” of storehouses, writes Elizabeth Wayland Barber in her book Women’s Work—The First 20,000 Years. One woman was a gardener. Women also worked as housekeepers, nurses, hairdressers, cosmeticians and just plain servants. A few women were “priestesses of…
-
Women’s work
Women have always worked—sometimes inside the home and sometimes outside the home. Sometimes with respect for what they were doing and sometimes without respect. But, women have always worked. That’s the conclusion of Elizabeth Wayland Barber in her book Women’s Work—The First 20,000 Years. In Europe during the Neolithic and Early Bronze ages, there was…
-
Do something!
Catherine Burks-Brooks was 21 in 1961 when she joined a group of Black and white activists riding a bus through the segregated South. At 11, the Black girl had refused to step out of the way to let white pedestrians pass on the sidewalk. As a teenager, she once threw “Colored” sign off a city…
-
Politics and conscience
Lincoln’s motives were moral as well as political—a reminder that our finest presidents are those committed to bringing a flawed nation closer to the light, a mission that requires an understanding that politics divorced from conscience is fatal to the American experiment in liberty under law. That’s what Jon Meacham concludes in his book And…
-
White supremacy
Edward Alfred Pollard wrote a book called The Lost Cause Regained in 1868. In his book, he argued: Slavery was lost, but white supremacy could endure if the white South held fast to its commitment to a racial hierarchy. I read about Pollard in Meacham’s book about Abraham Lincoln–And There Was Light. –Joy
-
Atheists, socialists and communists?
James Henley Thornwell, a Presbyterian clergyman who defended slavery before the Civil War, once said: “The parties in this conflict are not merely abolitionists and slaveholders. They are atheists, socialists, communists on one side, and friends of order and regulated freedom on the other.” Jon Meacham writes about Thornwell in his book about Abraham Lincoln.
-
Gender parity?
Not a single functioning parliament in the world is male-only, reports Ms. magazine. However, women still hold only 25.8 percent of all legislative seats. It may take another 80 years to reach gender parity.
-
Independent thinker?
No many of us are independent thinkers, concludes Bret Stephens in The New York Times. “There are very few people who don’t see themselves as independent thinkers. There are even fewer people who are. Most people just want to belong, and the most essential elements of belonging are agreeing and conforming.”
-
Moments to remember
I am trying to remember what we did each day during our vacation in Bellingham, but the days are jumbled together in my mind. I remember sitting on a picnic table near the water while we ate pastries for breakfast, eating Polish crepes and pierogies at Magdalena’s in Fairhaven and watching a man fly 67—yes,…
-
Unanticipated souvenirs
We’re back from a wonderful trip to Bellingham, Washington. I am comforted by my memories as I recuperate from the COVID I brought home with me. I remember seeing a deer resting peacefully outside the window of our bedroom at our friends Mark and Eva’s house. I remember cracking crabs on a cruise and then…