Sometimes you just have to stand up

I was a rebel for almost any cause in my youth. From free speech to against illegal wars to save the mini skirt. I was working on a United Churches campaign to end the draft when a young draft dodger noticed my ERA pin - Equal Rights Amendment. He told me women were not equal and had no right to be. That God said we were the hand maidens of men.

I quietly got up from the desk and leaned over and told him in a whisper I hope he was drafted and walked out. From that day forward my goal was to make women equal in the eyes of the law. On March 22, 1972 the ERA was passed by the congress and began moving through the states for ratification. It ultimately failed. If it hadn't would we be having this current rash of vagina politics? Would presidential candidates be telling us we shouldn't be having sex except to procreate? Would states be passing laws that infringe on our rights to control our reproductive lives? Would companies have the right to refuse to cover birth control prescriptions even if they are used for other health reasons?

I think not.

And I feel a bit guilty that I stopped fighting. I believed that line in the 1964 equal rights amendment that stuck in sex as well as race would be enough. It obviously is not.

I live in a conservative community. And as an artist I depend upon my "friendly" presence on the web to further my reputation and my sales. So there were a lot of reasons to not get involved in fighting this current round of oppression of my sex. And I was trying to be quiet and lady like in my subtle support. Until Rush Limbaugh. And the most recent round of oppressive laws in Virginia (maybe they should change the name of the state to a man's name).

But I have a bumper sticker on the back of my car (which was there when I got the car) which says, "Your silence will not protect you," Audre Lorde. And it occurs to me that my silence might get me burned at the stake. We all need to speak up about this horrid trend of the religious right before we are all victims of the next inquisition. Four million women were put to death by the Catholic church during those times. Now they just want to deny us equal access to health care. It all begins with one small step.

But they are way past that small step. They have allied themselves with the Christian Right (which is wrong) and with one of the two major parties of our country. And it is not just the laws but the attitude. They have made it right for a major public figure to rant for three days against a coed witness before a congressional committee. To defame her sex and her character nationally over and over and over.

And this morning when I thanked Carbonite, Inc for withdrawing their sponsorship I became a victim of the same nasty, sexist abuse. I will not be silent on this issue if it kills me. It feels rather lonely out here but it feels right.

This Would Be Funny if it Wasn't So Pathetic

The House of Representatives of the United States has at last passed a universal health care bill. It is only one step on a very long road to passage of a measure to be sent to President Obama for signature. But it is one step further than any president in the history of our country has gotten.

We have been trying to pass something for decades. We are the only developed nation in the world without universal health care. And we are the one with the highest medical costs in the world. I won't go into all the reasons why we should be writing our representatives and urging them to move forward with this. I have written lots of blogs on the subject. But just yesterday I was talking to a long time and very dear friend of mine. We have remained friends inspite of the fact she listens to and believes Rush Limbaugh. We just avoid the subject of politics. But every once in a while some subject we are discussing sidles into forbidden ground and it did so yesterday.

I have been busy (too busy to even keep up on this blog - mea culpa) and have not made myself check in on the extreme right. So rather than stop the conversation yesterday I just let her ramble on about what is being said in the dungeons about health care reform. Frankly, I was rather stunned. The AARP and the American Medical Medical Association have deserted the conservatives and endorsed this "socialistic plot." The end of the world as we know it is close. Oh, so close. Well, according to my extreme liberal friends (studiers of the Mayan Calendar) it is suppose to end in 2012 anyway. I think it would be nice to have good and cheap health care for the last couple of years.

I always rather wonder if my friend has it right - what she says they say. It always sounds so obsurd so I tripped off to various Internet sites after the conversation (why I did not get as much painting done as I wanted) and found out it is even worse then she reported. Being intelligent she naturally threw out a few extreme claims of the right.

I have an ex-husband who loves to reuse key phrases to skip over large sections of background information he knows I am aware of. It is one way to move the conversation forward rapidly. One of his favorite is: What are they thinking? To which I generally reply: Isn't it clear they are not thinking?

In fact, having exhausted all meaningful argments regardless of how innane, they have moved on to pure scare tactics. The dreaded monster in the closet approach of GW Bush. It would be funny if it wasn't so pathetic.

But the really, really, really scary part is there are people out there that believe in that monster.

Where is the bottom?

My father always seemed to have a quick comeback for any of my fears as a child. I remember in a fishing boat on a huge lake and asking how deep the water was. His reply was, "It doesn't matter once it is over your head."


I have been feeling a lot like that nervous kid in the small boat with the entire financial crisis, but the bottomline (or bottom) is way over my head. I am treading water in the small end of the pool. But today Warren Buffett who swims with the big guys says the economy fell off a cliff. And people are changing their buying habits like he did not anticipate. We are all in the shallow end treading water.

But Mr. Buffett remains calm. So did the band that played on the decks of the sinking Titanic. According to Buffett fear is dominating Americans' behavior and the economy has basically followed the worst-case scenario because of that fear. He didn't say it in this article I read but we don't need naysayers like Rush Limbaugh or even the congressional Republicans fighting against the direction that our President is rowing.

Buffett remains optimistic and says now is the time that the nation's leaders need to support President Obama's recovery plan, which I believe he had a hand in drafting. I learned today that my small community will get some of those first "shovel ready project" funds which will bring $25 million in infrastructure development to the area. Half of that will be labor costs which translates to jobs. And business for restaurants and landlords and shops.

I am still treading water but it is possible I see a dim light of a possible ship of rescue on the horizon. I don't want to hear that it is not going to come or that someone on national radio actually hopes it doesn't.

We're all in this together?

I came down to earth yesterday from the high of the Inauguration of our 44th President of the United States. Traipsing through CNN videos I saw the horror that was Gaza after the Israeli forces pulled out, read the reports of white phosphorus being used on civilians, and listened to Rush Limbaugh declaring that he hoped Obama failed in his agenda for America.

And later I got out into my conservative Republican community and listened to the people that bought GW Bush's version of his eight years in office. There seem to be some people desperately clinging to the Red State/Blue State assignation of blame game. And I find that sad because we are all in the same boat and blame gets us nowhere. Certainly not ahead. And if Obama fails in the tasks before him then the United States fails. And it can happen. We are damn close to it right now whether it is GW Bush's fault or not.

I am not enough of a economist to know what exactly that would mean in the world scheme of things but I doubt China would be doing very well since we won't be buying their goods. And we could no longer afford to keep troups in Iraq and Afganistan or even bring them home?

I am not even totally sure what the United States failing would look like. I assume something like the collapse of the USSR. Various states would form independent federations for survival. Those with the least population and the largest natural resources would fare best. Those with the largest populations and least resources would try to take over the others. We definitely would no longer be a world power that could rescue other nations in trouble or send aid to the starving.

It would be best if Obama does not fail, Mr. Limbaugh. I doubt you would have a radio station to talk from if he does. And what is to be gained, Israel, from having that many children in a neighboring country hate you? Or putting white phosphorus in the air for your own troops to breathe? I think we ought to all (like the entire world) work together to get this floundering ship to shore before we start pecking holes in it. We are in enough trouble with global warming. No need to heat things up more with bombs. We don't need more negative thinking or more toxic chemicals in the air.

As every school child knows from the playground; enemies are all too easy to make. Time to make friends and foster hope. Time to put our energies into our collective survival.