Mary Jo Atkins, Midcontinent Supply, Bowie, Texas, 1945
When I was 13 we moved back to the tiny North Texas town where my mother, her mother, and three generations before that had grown up (and gone to the same school). What remained was the school, a gas station, and an occasionally-meeting Baptist church, plus houses and trailers of people who had not yet moved away.
My mother was valedictorian in high school. She was also two years younger than her classmates because she had twice been moved ahead a grade. Smart as hell. And, I slowly learned, had a wild streak. Her father was a Wobbly and that whole line was radical as well as bookish, so I figure it comes from them.
After we moved back to that town, from the people who knew my mother when she was a teenager, I learned things nobody else in our family had a clue about. Because of our relationship, I was able to go to her and ask her about these rumors. Most of them turned out to be true. The one that was false is that she had an abortion as a teenager -- which did seem far-fetched, given the region and the era.
Mama used her young age as an excuse not to date boys individually. She'd go out with groups of friends, but her scrapbook was choked with photos of the girls she knew, not boys. When she was 16 and had just graduated, that summer she had an affair with another girl, some years older than Mama, named Mary Nell Howard. Mary Nell had a motorcycle, which was an extraordinary rarity in 1943 in rural Texas. She would pull up to the farmhouse, Mama would run out and hop on the back, and away they'd go. Montague County was dry (as was most of North Texas). You had to cross the state line into Oklahoma to get liquor. But Mary Nell knew an Italian immigrant in the county seat who made bootleg chianti, so they'd roar over to his place and pick up a bottle, which Mama would hold in public view as they zoomed off to wherever they went -- some place out in the boonies -- to drink and make love.
One weekend Mary Nell didn't show. Mama had gotten a job in the nearby Big Town, Bowie (population 3000) as a secretary, so she went off to work on Monday worried sick. That evening, Mary Nell showed up wearing a cheap gold band. She had gone to Wichita Falls with some folks, gotten drunk and married an airman. The breakup was just that brutal. Mama nearly died. Her childhood friend, Son Henry (a distant cousin), talked her through the next few weeks.
Thing is, Son had been in love with Mama all their lives. His sister Margie was Mama's best friend, same grade, and Son was waiting for Mama to love him back.
Mama instead focused on her job, and quickly got promoted from secretary to bookkeeper at Midcontinent Supply. She still ran around with her friends, but she garnered the attention of the manager at her job, a married man named Johnny Cooper. Johnny was half Comanche, and his wife was not just full-blood but a member of a prominent tribal family across the border in Oklahoma. Johnny lived in Bowie during the week and went home to his family on the weekends.
Eventually Johnny hit on Mama, and, with no word ever from Mary Nell, she said sure, why not. They began having an affair. Despite Johnny's efforts, the scandal of course broke. After a few months, one day while Johnny was out of the office, a well-dressed older woman pulled up in a nice car and came in, looking for Mama. It was his wife, driving down from Oklahoma. She said, in a voice everyone else could hear, "So you're the piece of trash who's been shacking up with my husband. Well, honey, have fun while you can. He'll never leave me -- I've got control of the money. You're not his first and you won't be his last." Then she turned and left.
Mama was beside herself. Once again, she turned to Son Henry. She wanted to be done with Johnny, but she was afraid if she broke up with him, he'd fire her. And she really wanted that job. It was her doorway to independence. So she and Son came up with a plan. They let themselves be seen on main street in Son's open roadster with a bottle of whiskey on the seat between them and a folded blanket in the back seat. They headed slowly out of town and went to the lake, where Mama sat on the blanket and drank steadily, weeping not over Johnny but Mary Nell, while Son tended a small fire and kept his hands to himself. In the morning, they made sure to be seen at a local diner.
That's all it took. Word got back to Johnny swiftly. He confronted Mama, saying everybody knew Son was in love with her (which was jolting news to her) and now she'd cheated on him. He did fire her, after all. When I was in high school, Johnny was elected mayor of another nearby town. I never caught a glimpse of him, though.
Mama went to work as a soda jerk at a drugstore. Crappy pay, but one of her good friends worked the same shift with her and they were both lookers, got some tips that way. A crew of doodlebuggers was in town, looking for oil. They heard about the gorgeous babes making ice cream sundaes at the drugstore, and one night after work, a few of them dropped in to order shakes and have an ogle. One of the young men asked if he could come back after the drugstore closed and walk Mama home to her boarding house. She said sure, why not. Five weeks later they got married by a Justice of the Peace. That was my father.
He told me, several times, that he fell in love with her the minute he laid eyes on her. My mother, on the other hand, said that Daddy looked kind and he promised they would live in Bowie so she could find bookkeeping work, advance a career but stay close to her friends. She was right about the kind part, but not anything else.
When I was 17 and fell in love with my high school history teacher, and our affair was the talk not just of our town but the entire county, Mama pulled me into her bedroom one day after school and told me about her and Mary Nell, about Son and Johnny. She said I was going to get shredded, that this teacher would leave me to return to her husband. Then she said "I learned to stick to men, honey, because they'll never get close enough to break my heart."
But I had a date to meet my new lover out in the country, and I sat there impatiently, finally saying "I'm not you, Mama. Can I go now?"
I have a photo of Mary Nell. I'd give a hell of a lot to talk with her, but have not been able to track her down. After Mama died, I was the only person in our family who knew any of this. But the only reason I knew it, really, was because of the stories I heard from Mama's high school friends. When I began turning out like Mama, well, you can just imagine the gossip. And, of course, I followed up on what I heard with Mama. She and I talked, really talked. Even when it was godawful uncomfortable. I've kept her secrets until now. The rest of my family is dead, and it was a benign secret.
Or maybe not. Maybe Mary Nell took real advantage of my mother, as I have come to understand that the high school teacher, five years my senior, had no business on earth becoming lovers with me. I insisted it was love, it did me no harm, I wanted her. Now, thirty years on, I can see it was in fact part of my training as an object of abuse, welcoming the sexual attention of someone older and much more powerful than me. Despite the fact that we lasted five years, and I got a daughter out of it, I still wish I had not been lovers with her, after all. Some lessons come harder than others. We had no chance of ever being equals. And I've learned that power imbalance is actually not erotic, after all.
Ten years ago I ran across a photo of Mama's mama, Hettie, wearing a man's suit and bowler, in a passionate clinch with another woman. I pointed to the photo and hoarsely asked Hettie's sister, my Great-Aunt Lee, what that was all about. She laughed merrily and said "Oh, your grandma, she liked to dress up and play-act. It didn't mean anything." But Hettie married late, and only after the woman in the photo, Nora Armstrong, left for Fort Worth to work in a department store as a sales manager. Nora never married. Hettie died a year after Mama was born, so neither of us knew her. Still, I consider myself third-generation Lesbian.
Except we all collected our identities in different ways. I used what was available to me in the mid 1970s, a freedom they could not have imagined. I didn't ever have to bend my will to that of a man, not with regards to intimacy. I can't speak for them. I can pass on Mama's quote for what it's worth, but she also did come to love my father. Though I very much doubt it was ever as much as she loved Mary Nell. That's my bias. I could be wrong. If someone appears to shed more light, I'll be sure to listen.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
HERITAGE AND INTERPRETATION SHOULD BE IN CONSTANT FLUX -- by Maggie Jochild
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Pride Fundraising Opportunity and Sharing
Lesbians Against Police Violence Contingent, June 1979, San Francisco Lesbian and Gay Freedom Day Parade. I'm not in this photo, but roommates and close friends are. This was my main political activism group from 1979 through 1983. I helped make this banner, too.
In honor of LGBTQ and Ally pride this week, I'm going to copy in here a great fundraiser from The Point Foundation that is currently being promoted over at Bitch Ph.D. She says:
"The Point Foundation provides scholarships and mentoring to LGBT student leaders at all educational levels. They and Yahoo have come up with an easy fundraising drive. For every photo uploaded to the group's photo pool, Yahoo will donate $1 and up to $25,000. Currently, The Point Foundation provides scholarships to 94 people, one of whom emailed me about this; they select Point Scholars based on social, emotional and financial need, scholastic aptitude and leadership potential. We pay particular attention to those students who have lost the financial and social support of their families and/or communities as a result of revealing their sexual orientation or gender identity. Photos don't necessarily need to be of pride (especially if participants aren't queer or didn't go to pride), but they just need to be representative of people who are proud to be LGBT or are proud of LGBT people."
So, I'm headed there to put up some classic photos from my past, and I encourage you to do the same. The instructions at Bitch Ph.D. are clear and can be found at Bitch Ph.D./ The Point Foundation is at The Point Foundation/ And if you post photos there, let us know here which ones are yours! Mine are labeled as from Meggars and are of me, my daughter, and another LAPV banner in the 1979 SF Lesbian and Gay Freedom Day Parade.
Sunday, June 17, 2007
DAUGHTER OF MICHIGAN -- by Maggie Jochild
As requested, here's a new post so the thread begun below can continue. I have many photos of MWMF but I'm reluctant to post nudity here. Ditto me and camping, but also I seem to be nekkid in all my tent photos. So, I'm using the closest Lesbian pulp novel image I had in JPEG format. Carry on.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Oh Michigan, my Michigan...
On our old blog of origin, there is an interesting discussion going on, highly reminiscent of one we had last year---http://dykestowatchoutfor.com/episode-495 . My opinion on the transgender issue then was that gender and sexual identity was in the mind of the beholder. That is, what one thinks and feels on the inside, constitutes one's sex, more than the body parts on the outside.
Now I'm not so sure.
What do we mean when we say "transgender" anyway? Does that mean someone who has gone "all the way"; surgery, hormones, etc? Or does it start at the beginning of the "transition"? Can a person be defined as transgender purely based on thoughts and feelings? What about "intersex" people, those born with ambiguous genitalia---are they transgender? A separate category?
And what about the children----hormones can be dangerous, surgery irreversible; should a decision about changing sex be left until adulthood? Or will it harm the child psychologically to stay in a body she/he is rejecting?
I realize I've asked a lot of questions, but right now that's what I have---questions. Are there others out there willing to discuss these things? (See what I mean?) Until then, here are some links related to the issue:
http://www.dykestowatchoutfor.com/index.php
http://www.michfest.com/
http://www.intraa.org/story/mwmffuah&print
http://www.chss.montclair.edu/~landwebj/ww/nyt_intersex.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klinefelter's_syndrome
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
R.I.P. Shadow
Last week, May 31st, 2007, my namesake, the original "Shadocat" passed on at the ripe old age of 16, to what I hope is the next of many lives yet to come. She was an elegant lady, with long, silky black and silver fur; spookily beautiful, and completely devoted to my daughter Robin (that's her in the picture). She merely tolerated the rest of us mortals, although in her later years she would allow some of us in her inner circle to pet or keep company with her.
She managed the rest of the household pets with a deft and authoritative paw, from obstinate basset hounds, to runaway bunny rabbits, to foundling kittens with beauty and grace. I'll miss her---I still can't believe she's gone.
Sunday, May 27, 2007
HAPPY 58TH BIRTHDAY TO A DYKE'S DYKE, LIZA COWAN -- by Maggie Jochild
Liza Cowan was born on this day in 1949 in New York City, the youngest of four accomplished and big-hearted children born to Louis G. and Polly (Spiegel) Cowan. Liza was raised in Manhattan in a household with deep links to show business, the civil rights movement, art, politics, intellectualism, and a particularly Jewish passion for justice. In her early 20s, she came out as a lesbian and became one of the founders of modern Lesbian-feminism, Lesbian-separatism, secular Jewish feminism, and woman-based art. She is a living example of how the women of the Boomer generation used feminism, political lesbianism, class analysis, and a redefinition of "female" culture/art to rock American society on its axis, a jolt that the backlash has not been able to halt.
Liza's roots provide some intriguing clues to the development of her particular brand of radicalism. Lou Cowan, one-time president of CBS, creator and producer of Quiz Kids and The $64,000 Question, was raised a Russian Jewish working-class kid in Chicago. At age 21, he changed his name from Cohen to Cowan and set his sights on class mobility and education beyond his rabbinic ancestry. Polly (Pauline) Spiegel came from upper-class (Spiegel's catalogue), Midwestern German Jews who were keenly committed in social justice. Their happy, complementary marriage created a fertile environment for their children, who were always told they would be expected to make their own way in the world, both in terms of interests and career as well as financially.
During World War II, Lou Cowan was head of the U.S. Office of War Information, the Allies’ propagandist-in-chief against Nazism. In 1943, Lou was named director of a nascent, BBC-inspired government radio network called the Voice of America. Later, although a Reform Jew, he was chief communications advisor to the Methodist Church and a media advisor to Illinois Gov. Adlai Stevenson during the Democrat’s campaigns for president in 1952 and 1956. After leaving CBS in 1959, Lou join the faculty of Columbia University’s elite graduate school of journalism, where he helped launch the Columbia Journalism Review, and a former student wrote "he conducted a highly civilized seminar with eminent guests from the worlds of business, politics and government."
According to another family biographer, "Polly Cowan, not to be outdone by her husband, was an award-winning producer of the 1950s hit game show Down You Go, and the current-events radio program Conversation. Unabashedly inciting listeners to community activism, her 'Call for Action' program was an early example of exploiting communication technology to advance citizen participation. Polly Cowan’s name is enshrined in the civil rights pantheon. With the redoubtable Dorothy Height, she organized the 'Wednesdays in Mississippi' workshops that brought together black and white women from North and South in dialogues and cooperative action."
In later years, Liza's parents also ran a publishing house, Chilmark Press, that produced works by Stephen Spender, W.H. Auden, and other literati. They died together in a freak electrical fire in their New York apartment in November 1976, when Liza was only 27.
As a toddler, Liza was used as a "focus group" by her father to find out which aspects of Captain Kangaroo (a project he created) was most interesting to her age demographic. During their early 20s, her older brothers went to rural Mississippi that dangerous summer of 1964, to help register black voters and start a farmers co-op. Their letters home were collected by Liza (still only 15) and her older sister, printed and distributed, published in Esquire and republished in Letters from Mississippi, a chronicle of the so-called “Freedom Summer.”
Liza went to a private, progressive Manhattan high school (Dalton) where, before she graduated, she landed a job with WBAI radio in NYC. In the early 1970s, Liza Cowan was the producer and host of Electra Rewired, a late night talk show on WBAI. She interviewed Maya Angelou, Yoko Ono, Germaine Greer, as well as local feminist and Lesbian activists. She also produced the live music series, The WBAI Free Music Store. One example of a show by her is given in Pacifica Archives as "A Conversation With Yoko Ono -- Liza Cowan and Jan Albert talk to Yoko Ono, about the evolution of her art in the early 1960's. Among the topics discussed are: concept art, match piece, acting out madness in order not to go mad, Yoko as building superintendent, the early loft concerts, the pea-throwing ritual, and discrimination against Yoko as a female artist. Recorded September, 1971."
However, the most compelling aspect of her time at WBAI is that this is where Liza met and fell in love with Alix Dobkin, a folksinger who went on to produce the first all Lesbian record album, Lavender Jane Loves Women. To quote Alix about the event: "We came out from the rooftops, we were so ready, and practically moments after, we came out on Liza’s radio show." As Liza wrote about it in her later magazine, DYKE: A Quarterly: "In 1971 I would occasionally have women musicians on my radio show. None were feminists, certainly their music was not directed to women. Several women sent tapes of their music to me. None of these women had any talent for writing or singing. I used to say over the air that I was looking for women musicians to play on the show, and one day, Alix Dobkin called me and told me she sang and wrote and would like to be on Electra. I scheduled her to appear on Dec 13, 1971. A few hours before airtime I realized that she was to be my only guest for a five-hour live show, and I had never even heard her. We went on the air, we talked for a little while and then she sang a song she had just written, ‘My Kind of Girl.’ I couldn’t believe my ears. She was fantastic. She sang about a dozen songs, we talked some, and we had to go off the air early because of transmitter difficulties. Two months later we were lovers, four months after that I was fired."
As Alix elucidates after that first show together, "Her mother phoned her the next day. 'What was going on with you two last night?' Neither Liza nor I really knew until Valentine’s Day two months later, when we finally slept together. Earlier, I had written 'The Woman in Your Life is You' as an intro for her show, but she used it as an outro for a later show which she called Electra. Our politics accelerated in the hotbed of feminism inflaming NYC in 1972 and Liza decided that on her new show, Dyke Salad, she would not speak to men during the call-in portion of the show, so she hung up on them, a practice which got her fired." This song, "The Woman In Your Life Is You", has become a Lesbian-feminist anthem for an entire generation.
Liza and Alix had a vigorous, extremely productive partnership for six years, during which time Alix (with Liza's across-the-board help) produced not only Lavender Jane Loves Women but also Living with Lesbians, whose album cover is an arresting and instantly-recognized image from that era (Liza is on the far right). Liza's name, details of their relationship, and ideological influence appears in a great many of Alix's lyrics. Even after they broke up, Liza's memory is evoked more than once in Alix's next album, XX Alix, especially in "Separation '78", which contains this description of their relationship: "Catalysts, confidantes, lovers / And who else we'll be to each other / We'll discover". If Alix is, as she has been called, "Head Lesbian" for a generation of Lesbian-feminists, Liza's name must accompany hers.
The death of Lou and Polly in 1976, a terrible personal blow to Liza, gave her unexpected financial security in the form of life insurance proceeds. She used this income to launch one of the definitive lesbian-feminist publications of the 1970s, DYKE: A Quarterly. Co-editing with her friend Penny House, Liza produced some of the movement's first indepth articles about women and art from a Lesbian perspective. DYKE was big format, glossy and beautiful in an era when many women's journals were still being produced on mimeograph and stapled together by hand. As a cultural theory magazine, DYKE lasted for three years, publishing two long issues per year on controversial topics such as Lesbian-separatism, Lesbian fashion, dykes behind bars, and producing theme issues like an ethnic dykes issue and the proposed but never realized issue on Lesbian cartoons.
Liza continued to write (for instance, she appears in The Original Coming Out Stories edited by Julia Penelope and Susan Wolfe), to contribute interviews and analysis, and to assist in Lesbian-feminist cultural events. After stints running the Woodstock, New York Chamber of Commerce, and working in advertising and greeting card publishing, she went to the graduate faculty at the New School for Social Research to get an MA in anthropology. Her Masters Thesis theorized a phenomenon she named Sociosomatic Disease, in which symptoms are transmitted not by virus but by discourse. She interrupted her pursuit of a Ph.D. to reclaim her identity as a painter and also to become a mother to two daughters, a new generation of Cowans now in their pre-teens. Co-mother to these children is Laurie Essig, who was partnered with Liza for 13 years and sometimes chronicled their family life in Salon essays.
Liza now works as an artist and runs Pine Street Art Works in Burlington, Vermont. She has shown her paintings and photographs in one woman and group shows in New York and Vermont. In the summer of 2006, her studio held the launch party for Alison Bechdel's book Fun Home. Liza and her gallery were also responsible for the one-of-a-kind pairing of the art of Bechdel and another Lesbian icon, Phranc, for an exhibit beginning September 2006 called "Paper Play".
Liza's eldest brother, Paul Cowan (now deceased), went to Ecuador with the Peace Corps and later made a career as a progressive journalist and author, writing for the Village Voice. His acclaimed book, An Orphan in History, is a beautiful and moving account of his search for his religious and cultural roots, and a good resource for Cowan family history.
Liza's surviving elder brother, Geoff Cowan, just retired as dean of the USC Annenberg School for Communication at USC. His wife Aileen has served major roles in national and California politics and public service.
Liza's older sister, Holly Cowan Shulman, is Research Associate Professor, Studies in Women and Gender, at the University of Virginia. She has written of her family "We remain committed to the beliefs of prophetic Judaism: to help the poor and the needy and to seek justice. As a family we have worked toward that goal in politics, law and the rabbinate, through writing and art, education and the academy."
QUOTES ABOUT LIZA COWAN:
"Today we live in a world of strident talk shows, where received opinions on the state of the world are trumpeted back and forth, and anyone who might dare to unfurl a hope is quickly put down. But at WBAI-FM in the early 1970s, a period of wild and wonderful experimentation in free-form radio was taking place. Pioneers like Bob Fass, Steve Post, Larry Josephson, Liza Cowan, and others could open the phone lines and just let people talk, never screening a single call." -- Margot Adler, A Heretic's Heart http://www.hourwolf.com/heretic/index.htm
"Liza wishes the library / Had men and women listed separately / Ah, but theirs is the kingdom / She knows who she'll find / In the history of mankind / But then she's inclined to be ahead of her time / She's a lesbian..." -- Alix Dobkin, "View from Gay Head" on Lavender Jane Loves Women
QUOTES BY LIZA COWAN:
(Referring to her mother): "The white gloves don't work anymore, but there's nothing quite as amusing as expressing outrageous ideas while twiddling ones pearls."
Liza Cowan's 1970s column, "What the Well-Dressed Dyke Will Wear," in Cowrie documents current opinion on fashion choices of the day: "Makeup, long hair, dresses, stockings, high heels, etc are the basic uniforms of women. I refuse to wear feminine clothes... I would just as soon wear a ball and chain...to pretend that one can transcend the meaning and effect of these clothes is bullshit. Fashions do not happen by accident. Clothes have a function and a meaning." And "Long hair usually indicates that a Dyke trying to pass...It is liberating in fact and symbolic to have short hair". She worries that women will grow tired of "the Dyke Schlepp Uniform" and emphasizes the importance of a "true Dyke fashion" evolving. -- From The Lesbian Herstory Archives
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Congratulations, Mary and Heather!
Follow this link for the mindbending picture of the day.
http://www.cnn.com/POLITICS/blogs/politicalticker/2007/05/cheneys-welcome-new-baby.html
It's a wonder that Dick's head doesn't explode from the cognitive dissonance.
Deena
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
ITMFA?
For those who are curious as to why W remains in office, despite his abysmally low approval ratings, scandal after scandal, and the ever increasing pile of evidence suggesting he is ready, willing and able to break the law to get what he wants, may I suggest this most excellent article from today's edition of Salon:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2007/05/22/impeachment/:
Seems payback is a mf after all...
Oh, and if you're looking for a good summer potboiler, may I suggest this:
http://archive.salon.com/news/primary_sources/2007/05/15/comey_testimony/index.html
It's a little unbelievable and a bit over the top, but what really sucks is it's true.
Never thought I'd say this,but for this one time, you go ,John Ashcroft; let your eagle soar!
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Happy Norwegian Independence Day!
Constitution Day has a rather interesting history: After being under Danish rule for 400+ years (those Danish bastards!), Norway held a "peaceful revolution", by calling a constitutional convention which declared Norway a free country in it's own right.
Constitution Day is celebrated each year, not by military parades, or displays of weapons, but with parades of children (and their parents), dressed in colorful, traditional attire, waving flags and singing songs. (cool, huh?)
Sort of makes up for all the lutefiske and leftse...
Norwegian Joke Page:
http://www.lawzone.com/half-nor/humor.htm
Lutefiske and Leftse website:
http://members.aol.com/DGJatLLL/abthtml/abtlute.htm
Monday, May 14, 2007
SADLY, NO -- I DO EXPECT THE INQUISITION -- by Maggie Jochild
I've watched the first two episodes of the current PBS series "Secret Files of the Inquisition". It describes itself as "Based on previously unreleased secret documents from European Archives including the Vatican, Secret Files of the Inquisition unveils the incredible true story of the Catholic Church's 500-year struggle to remain the world's only true Christian religion." Since Christian (as well as Jewish) religious history is an area where I've done a great deal of reading and thinking, I was looking forward to a new examination of this incredibly horrific half-millenium of human depravity committed in the name of g*d.
Although this series is generating positive reviews and the writer/producer has a solid, apparently apolitical background of investigative documentary work behind him, I still found the series so far to be less critical than I would have hoped. Even the introduction, which reminds us that the late Pope John Paul II apologised for the Inquisition in 2002, stating the Catholic Church should show penitence for "accepting methods of intolerance or even violence in the service of truth", seems to be watered down later in the excusatory tone of remarks of Rev Joseph Di Noia. Di Noia is the Under-secretary of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, successor body to the Inquisition and, until last year, headed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. It is considered "controversial" that the Church allowed Di Noia to even appear in the documentary. Even more "radical", apparently, is his comment "It was a mistake to torture people. However, torture was regarded as a perfectly justified, legitimate way of producing evidence and it was therefore legally justified."
Since when it is radical to admit that torture is wrong? And why do we need more arguments that the people who do it believe they are justified?
I also found a couple of the other historians whose comments are featured heavily in the analysis to be appeasatory or a little too enamored of their own viewpoint. Stephen Haliczer of Northwestern Illinois University is clearly in love with the papacy and its trappings, and has created a Vatican board game where you, too, can advance from Cardinal to Pope (!) Another frequent commenter, Charmaine Craig, is a writer of historical fiction, and the novel from which she quotes is never revealed in the documentary to be a work of fiction rather than scholarly research. A list of the top Inquisition researcher and writers currently in the world today does not hold the names of any of this documentary's commentators, which to me reeks of cherry-picking.
The episode on the Cathars of Langeudoc fails to ever mention Knights of Templar or, even more troubling, the fact that the chief "heresy" of Cathars was the fact that they did not believe Christ to have been an incarnation of God. This rejection of the Incarnation is the most persistent controversy of Christian history -- it demarcates those Christians who, from the outset, rejected Christ's divinity from those who have used all means possible to force the Church to accept this dogma. Its omittance from the documentary is telling.
There is (as yet) no mention of the mass burnings for witchcraft, which was in fact a genocidal attempt to eliminate the heresy of pre-Christian European religions and strong women in general, not technically a part of the Inquisition's focus (which was to eliminate the heresy of Jews and Muslims as well as Christians who believed a different version of Christianity, let's be honest here) -- but still, it was part of the public discourse and a means of terror employed by the same Dominicans conducting the Inquisition. Yet, not a mention.
And, most upsetting to me, was one so-called scholar's assertion that the persecution of conversos in Spain was not aimed at Jews, only at "Christians" who had, of course, been forced to pretend to be Christians under pain of death. To argue in any regard that the Inquisition was not rooted in anti-Semitism is an outright lie. The expulsion of Jews from Spain and Portugal, the Second Diaspora, is a key component in Jewish history and led to some of the greatest cultural transformation and theology in Judaism (i.e., Tikkun Olam), as well as setting the stage for the new forms of anti-Semitism that would result in the Holocaust.
Short shrift is also given to the fact that the principles of the Inquisition are the bedrock upon which conquest of the New World was undertaken -- forcible conversion or genocidal asssault on two entire continents. This gets one line in the documentary, yet Columbus was a direct product of the Inquisition. I was outraged by that point.
The project smells to me of Catholic apologia, possibly in reaction to the venomous anti-Catholic attacks currently by the evangelical fascists in our country, possibly to obscure the Holy Roman Church's direct role in anti-Muslim policies still in effect today, or possibly just more of the same from Pope Benedict, a Brown-Shirt boy at heart. I don't plan to watch the final two episodes. We need better thinking on this subject to break out of the evil being perpetuated by religious fundamentalists today. We need a lot more than pseudo-accountability, which apologizes without self-examination and uses gaps in memory or documentation to avoid responsibility. I'll stick with the Monty Python version for now: "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!"
Monty Python Spanish Inquisition
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Karl Rove IS the Devil!!!!
I tried my best to find a free picture of "MC Rove" to go along with this post, but alas, that was not possible.
However, I did find this nifty etching of him relaxing at home.
My mission today is to beg all of you good people out there to please, please, PLEASE check out this link!
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/05/10/voting_rights/?source=newsletter
Monday, May 7, 2007
Glad I'm not in Kansas anymore
Here's a link to an excellent article regarding my area's latest disaster:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/07/us/07tornado.html?th&emc=th
Cant't say it much better than the Times.
Saturday, May 5, 2007
VIVE CINCO DE MAYO -- by Maggie Jochild
Here's an interesting development: CBS News has had to turn off its comments section on its website connected to stories about Barack Obama because of the extremely ugly and persistent racist comments that get posted. They say the influx was simply too much for them to handle.
Two responses: Well, what do you expect when your radio programs include the likes of Rush Limbaugh, William Bennett and Don Imus? You can't foster hate without expecting it to proliferate.
And: I wonder if this is related to the Secret Service's decision to put Obama under their protection this week.
A copy of CBS's "Rules of Engagement" is below, for your consideration.
On the good news front, a piece of history I learned today: The Mexican victory in 1862 celebrated as Cinco de Mayo is what kept Spain from coming in on the side of the Confederacy during the Civil War. Yet another reason to celebrate it! Have some mole chicken and green chili flautas on me!
CBS'S RULES OF ENGAGEMENT:
People who want to post comments on CBSNews.com are going to have to follow our rules. We know that not all forums are like that, but this one is.
There’s legal language nearby. Here's the plain English: no libel, slander, no lying, no fabricating, no swearing at all, no words that teenagers use a lot that some people think aren't swearing but we do, no insulting groups or individuals, no ethnic slurs and/or epithets, no religious bigotry, no threats of any kind, no bathroom humor, no comparing anyone to Hitler, Stalin or Pol Pot. We expect heated, robust debate, but comments should be polite and civil. We consider this to be public space so behave and write accordingly.
Yes, what is not allowable is subjective. CBSNews.com absolutely reserve the right to remove posts we think break any of the rules or the spirit of the rules and we reserve the right to ban individuals from commenting. We will use language filtering programs to block certain words and we will use human editing too. .... We require everyone who comments to register and provide a real e-mail address. No exceptions. And posting comments is not the same thing as complaining to CBS News or notifying CBS News of a problem – legally, there’s a big difference.
Friday, May 4, 2007
I am the Prince of Poland
Or rather, I was the Prince of Poland last Saturday evening. Being an unrepentant opera fanatic, I couldn’t miss The Liberation of Ruggiero from the Island of Alcina, written around 1525 by Francesca Caccini. The singing, by four professional opera singers trading parts, was lovely, but the acting, I admit, was a little stiff. I suppose that’s to be expected when it’s being presented by the Northwest Puppet Theatre and all the actors are marionettes.
Ruggiero is the first opera known to have been written by a woman, and was originally performed in Florence to celebrate the visit of the Prince of Poland. In the prelude, the prince is welcomed by the god Neptune (who has no reason for being there except for the fact that the story takes place on an island), so things don’t make much sense if the prince isn’t around. That’s where I came in.
When I came in, I was one of the first to arrive—on purpose, of course. I’m 4’10” and wanted to make sure I got a good seat. And there before me was the best seat in the house, front and center with an excellent view. This was no ordinary theatre seat. It was a wooden chair with arms and a high back, fancy carving, and a red velvet cushion. My aching back said “Yes!” and I took it.
Before the music began, a woman came out and welcomed us, reminded everyone to turn off their cell phones, and introduced the audience to the Prince of Poland. That was me.
I was sitting on the throne! That made me the Prince of Poland. I was presented with a crown, which was altogether too brachycephalic for me, and a sceptre in the form of a wooden folly stick, which was introduced as my prime minister. His grin did remind me a bit of Tony Blair. During intermission the crown fell off and bent itself into a more comfortably dolichocephalic shape, so I no longer had to wear it dangling over my right ear.
During my evening of royal privilege, I strove to behave with the appropriate self-contained dignity and airy condescension. Only two people were allowed to kiss my hand.
By the way, next year the puppet opera will be Don Giovanni. Maybe I’ll get to seduce someone.
Bio (culled from ten minutes on the web):
Francesca Caccini, (1587 - 1645?) often called La Cecchina, (The Songbird), was born in Florence, Italy, on the eighteenth of September, 1587. Her father was a prolific composer; her mother, stepmother, brother, and husband were singers; and her younger sister, Settimia, was a singer and composer. Francesca herself was a singer, instrumentalist, composer, and lyricist; her performances were admired by Claudio Monteverdi. Although she was one of the most prolific female composers of her time, if not of all time, all that has survived of her work is Il primo libro delle musiche, a collection of songs, and Ruggiero alone of her five operas.
For more, see: Francesca Caccini
