My Mother Died

I have not written for many weeks because my mother died last month. Here is how her obituary read in the June 16 edition of her local newspaper:

Margarete _____, born in _______, Germany, February 18, 1923, died peacefully at the age of 84 on the morning of June 15 after a long illness. She was preceded in death by her husband Alexander, and is survived by her only, and devoted child, Christina Maria, as well as many friends, who loved her dearly. Margarete became a nurse in Germany before World War II, and met her American soldier husband soon after the war, at the 279th American Station Hospital in Berlin, Germany when she nursed him back to life after a near-fatal parachute accident. She immigrated with Alexander to the United States in 1950, and became a citizen shortly thereafter. Margarete worked for almost four decades as an obstetrical nurse and in management in surgery at _______Hospital, where she was a member of one of the first open heart teams in the country. She leaves to all those who share her profession a legacy of valuing quality nursing care. She strove for excellence in every life endeavor; she was an avid golfer, tended to her gorgeous gardens, and created intricate needlework of every kind. Her friends remember Margarete for her sense of humor, her stunning attractiveness, her love of beauty, and her determination. Her pithy wisdom included such observations as, “The entire world would be different if, when men and women had sex, neither would know which one could become pregnant.” She will continue to inspire all those whose lives she has touched.

OOPS!

Bye-Bye, Jerry!

The former spokesman for America's Moral Majority, The Reverend Jerry Falwell, was found dead of heart failure Tuesday at age 73 in his Lynchburg, Va., office. As noted by Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune, Falwell's heart failure was a grim irony to those who thought it had failed years earlier.

The Reverend Falwell can be remembered for such landmark moral positions as his denunciation of the BBC TV children's show, the "Teletubbies," because of his belief that Tinky Winky, the purple character with the triangular aerial on his head toting a red purse, is gay. He had decided to "out" Tinky Winky in the February 1999 edition of his National Liberty Journal, noting that the "subtle depictions" of gay sexuality are intentional. He later issued a statement that read: "As a Christian I feel that role modelling the gay lifestyle is damaging to the moral lives of children."

Falwell was tauted as the banner-carrier for the Moral Majority. At today's Liberty University commencement, Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich told the graduating class Saturday to honor the spirit of school founder Jerry Falwell by confronting "the growing culture of radical secularism" with Christian ideals.

Here is a sample of the Christian ideals purported by Falwell during his life.

Moral Proclamations in the Life of Jerry Falwell (in Chronological Order)

1958 ~ Falwell preaches that God meant for black Americans to serve white ones

1985 ~ Falwell offers support to the apartheid government of South Africa and denounces Bishop Desmond Tutu as a "phony."

1999 ~ Falwell publishes an article warning parents that Tinky Winky of the toddlers' show "Teletubbies" was gay.

2001 ~ Falwell blames abortion providers, gay rights proponents and the American Civil Liberties Union for the Sept. 11 attacks.

Some of our Family Values

My daughter's school will be hosting a production of "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf," a poetic drama about African-American women. Some of those women deal with the effects of rape, forced pregnancy, domestic violence, and poverty; Some of the women despair, and others triumph.

The play satisfies our family's feminist theology. We believe that lyrical art like "For Colored Girls" is necessary for putting us in touch with the pain faced by many women, and with the courage they gather. It is one of the few works of art in which an oppressed group of women has found a voice that can transform an audience, and call the listeners to response. In our family, this call to response is a sacred value.

We believe in our responsibility, as well-educated and economically privileged women, to be constantly aware of injustices toward women, to be actively involved in correcting them, and to embrace and learn from the courage of women who rise above unimaginable squalor. We remember that -- because we have not yet overcome our history of enslaving African women -- that they are more vulnerable than we are.

We teach these values to our daughter. We discuss the observations she shares with us about injustice toward poor women, violence against women, rape, and abortion, in the context of our belief about our responsibility. It is why, we tell her, we have chosen the work we do every day; why we place the lives of people for whom we care above the money we get from caring for them; why we do not tolerate pejorative words against any woman; why we cannot make choices for any other woman based on our personal experiences; and why we believe that racism will not go away until we are convinced that our black sisters can actually teach us more than we can teach them.

The lessons she our learns at home are reinforced at her school. She and her friends have many opportunities, in a safe environment, to share with each other their experiences regarding sexism and racism. We see her not ignoring issues relating to even subtle forms of sexism and racism. We are grateful that our daughter's beliefs, formed in her family, are reinforced at her school.

In stark contrast, many girls and women are silenced about what hurts them, and the collusion imposed upon them to not find their voices perpetuates the violence against them. I know these girls and women well, as I care for them in my clinical practice. Works of art like "For Colored Girls" powerfully shatter that collusion of secrecy.



Here is my favorite line from "For Colored Girls:"

"I found God in myself
And I loved her
I loved her fiercely."

We are grateful for our daughter, who finds something sacred in herself, and in every girl she knows. And in this, we believe.

Newt Gingrich Comes Out

Remember when, in the 1990's, Newt Gingrich led the country in a socio-political revolution bearing the "MORAL MAJORITY" banner? Several people countered with this caveat: "THE MORAL MAJORITY IS NEITHER!" They may have been on the left, but they were right!

In today's damage-control interview regarding his marital infidelity, the aspiring Republican 2008 presidential nominee Gingrich told Focus on the Family founder James Dobson: "There are times that I have fallen short of my own standards. There's certainly times when I've fallen short of God's standards." Focus on the Family interview (to be posted in full today): http://listen.family.org/daily/

Gingrich denies he is a hypocrite for having an affair with a congressional aid while seeking prosecution of President Clinton's lie about infidelity, lest we forget that he sought prosecution for the lie, not for the infidelity.

Instead, Gingrich, who frequently campaigns on family values issues demonstrates his hypocricy for behaviors contrary to those family values. Gingrich has had two messy divorces. The first in, 1981, from his first wife Jackie Battley, he initiated during her recuperation in the hospital from cancer surgery. And now he admits that his second marriage to Marianne, ended in 2000 during an affair with his third wife Callista Bisek. At the time of the affair, Callista was a congressional aide more than 20 years his junior.

Gingrich suddenly resigned from Congress in 1998 after the House ethics panel reprimand for using tax-exempt funding to advance his political agenda, The "MORAL MAJORITY" agenda. According to WIKIPEDIA, the "Moral Majority" was a political Christian lobby group begun in 1979 which campaigned on issues it believed central to upholding its Christian conception of the moral law, a perception it believed represented the majority of people's opinions (hence the movement's name). The central issues it campaigned on were outlawing abortion, opposing state recognition and acceptance of homosexuals, enforcing it's vision of life, and censoring media that promote what it labeled as an 'anti-family' agenda.

See Ali G interview with Newt Gingrich http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skv-wWCvGyw

View the blogs and polls; Gingrich's attempt at projecting moral rectitude by revealing his infidelity has not redeemed him.

Britney Went Bald

Recently my 14-year-old daughter recalled how, while still in middle school, her classmates insisted she looked exactly like Britney Spears. If only she had dressed and acted like her, she could be Britney's little sis! My daughter audibly, sighed at this memory, "I just never saw the resemblance."

Last week Britney checked herself out only 24 hours after entering a substance rehabilitation program in the Carribbean. A few days later she was spotted buzz-cutting her head at a San Fernando Valley hair salon, and then, receiving several dainty tatoos at a Sherman Oaks, California tatoo parlor.

A bystander interviewed by L.A.'s KABC-TV, which filmed Spears heading into Body & Soul Tattoo on Ventura Boulevard, said that the pop star had shaved her head because "she didn't want people touching her anymore."

My first reaction to Britney's baldness was to recall Melissa Etheridge at the 2005 Grammy's singing "Piece of My Heart" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Zus0m6VIXY
Melissa, radiant with wisdom, awash with real emotion, let out a primal scream, releasing six months of pain from chemotherapy for breast cancer. She was screaming for all of us. She could have been screaming for Britney.

All during her adolescence, while girls in her age cohort were trying out different looks, refining their thoughts, and re-inventing their identities, Britney was being created by the media who owned her. Britney's early music paralleled and personified the control exerted over her by the recording companies. This girl learned in her tweens to be enslaved and used by the corporate big daddy, as in "Baby One More Time" ". . .When I'm not with you I lose my mind, Give me a sign, Hit me baby one more time . . .The reason I breathe is you. . . Show me, how you want it to be . . . "

Perhaps Britney is becoming the girl she describes in "Overprotected," where she tell us to "Say hello to the girl that I am! You're gonna have to see through my perspective I need to make mistakes just to learn who I am. . . so fed up with people telling me to be Someone else but me."

Go ahead, Britney, shave that head, get some tatoos, and try out some of your own identities. To do that you will have to feel your own feelings, think your own thoughts, and sing your own songs. When you are ready, let out a scream that comes from way deep in that place where feelings have been pushed down and drugged, blunted by alcohol, and smothered by some made-up image forced upon you.

By the time you let that scream out, you will be so real, so in touch with yourself, that all the girrrls will recognize you. Maybe then my daughter will see the resemblance.

Little Boxes

Yesterday as I was driving to work from my yuppie house in the burbs, like someone in the Indianopolis 500, except surrounded by SUVs instead of sleek racecars, I found myself humming "Little Boxes" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvK0ZKaK6h8, written by Songwriter and social activist Malvina Reynolds (1900-1978). Oh how did I ever sell my soul?

Malvina Reynolds

Little boxes on the hillside
~ Little boxes made of ticky tacky
~ Little boxes on the hillside
~ Little boxes all the same
~ There's a green one and a pink one
~ And a blue one and a yellow one
~ And they're all made out of ticky tacky
~ And they all look just the same.
And the people in the houses
~ All went to the university
~ Where they were put in boxes
~ And they came out all the same
~ And there's doctors and lawyers
~ And business executives
~ And they're all made out of ticky tacky
~ And they all look just the same.
And they all play on the golf course
~ And drink their martinis dry
~ And they all have pretty children
~ And the children go to school
~ And the children go to summer camp
~ And then to the university
~ Where they are put in boxes
~ And they come out all the same.
And the boys go into business
~ And marry and raise a family
~ In boxes made of ticky tacky
~ And they all look just the same
~ There's a green one and a pink one
~ And a blue one and a yellow one
~ And they're all made out of ticky tacky
~ And they all look just the same.

Words and music by Malvina Reynolds. Copyright 1962, Schroder Music Company

Sweet Victory

Two weeks ago no one gave Serena Williams a chance of reaching the second week of the Australian open. The reasons they gave in the press were related to her lack of tournament play. Sportscasters decried her lack of fitness.

In my local tennis clubs the descriptive language was less kind. With a few exceptions, she was referred to as "fat" and a "diva," her choice of tennisware "outrageous." Few people were taking her seriously anymore.

I remember some similar discomfort among white people when Jackie Joyner-Kerse used to grace the track with coifed hair, loud manicures, and bright makeup. But any indignation was tempered with a tacit conviction by white sports fans that track was a black sport. Such confidence in dress and manner in a black tennis player has been offensive to many, and they "dog" Serena every chance possible.

Today Serena Williams answered her critics with an overpowering 6-1, 6-2 victory over top-seeded Maria Sharapova in the Australian Open final. I take courage that she is an "out there" minority woman. Thank you, Serena.

Send In The Troops, (Not The Soldiers --The Grandmothers!)

On January 10, 2007 George Bush announced that he will send about 21,500 extra US troops to Iraq and said that it was a mistake not to have more forces fighting the war before now. Most American politicians, a majority of American citizens, and many pundits now concede they were wrong to support Bush’s invasion of Iraq, stating that the administration lied to them about its justification. Then, why, oh why, did he deploy troops to Iraq in the first place? What were the reasons for starting a preemptive war? The Bush administration did have reasons. Theories abound regarding these reasons, but no who knows what they really are has fessed up. Likely, they believe that the truth would be too sensitive to divulge to the American people, since doing so would inadvertently also inform the enemy of freedom, the terrorists. Or, maybe they believe we are not able to understand the complex nuances of contemporary sociopolitics.

Certainly, not articulating the truth about why we are at war gives rise to the reason the Bush administration can't quite define what winning would mean.

So now we will send 21,500 more soldiers to win a war in Iraq for some reason we don't know. . . No wonder I have been humming Holly Near's "1000 Grandmothers!"

1000 Grandmothers
Words and music by Holly Near

Send in a thousand grandmothers
They will surely volunteer
With their ancient wisdom flowing
They will lend a loving ear.

First they'll form a loving circle
Around the wounded wing
Then contain the brutal beast of war
Sweet freedom songs they'll sing.

A lullaby much stronger
Than bombs and threats to kill
A force unlike we've ever known
Will break the murderer's will.

To the prisons we'll invite them
The most violent men will weep
When a thousand women hold them strong
And pray their souls to keep.

Let them rock the few who steal the most
And rule with youthful charm
So they'll see the damage that they do
And will fall into grandma's arms
Two thousand loving arms.

If you think these women are too soft
To face the world at hand
Then you've never known the power of love
And you fail to understand.

An old woman holds a powerful force
When she no longer needs to please
She can cut your shallow lie to bits
And bring you to your knees.
We best get down on our knees

And pray for a thousand grandmothers
Will you please come volunteer?
No longer tucked out of sight
Will you bring your power here

Will you bring your power here?

© copyright. Holly Near recorded on her CD "Edge"