Nancy Rubin Stuart: Happy July 4th to our Forgotten Founding Mothers!

We celebrate Independence Day this weekend, and Nancy Rubin Stuart, author of The Muse of the Revolution: The Secret Pen of Mercy Otis Warren and the Founding of a Nation, honors the often overlooked women of the American Revolution.

Traditionally, we celebrate our nation's birthday on July 4th with parades, fireworks and tributes to the Founding Fathers. Rarely do we recall the women who supported our patriots, those forgotten Founding Mothers who watched their men march off to fight for American independence, leaving them to struggle to support children, homes and farms.

Silence surrounds the lives of those nurturers. While we recall the names of "celebrity women" of that era-- Abigail Adams, wife of John Adams; Mercy Otis Warren, author of anti-British propaganda plays and historian of the American Revolution; Betsy Ross, who stitched the American flag; Deborah Sampson, disguised as a soldier who fought against the British, and Margaret Corbin, who loaded cannons on the battlefield-- we know relatively little about their personal sacrifices and those of their peers.

Before the Revolution, Abigail Adams and her historian friend, Mercy Otis Warren, shunned tea and proudly wore homespun garments in lieu of British finery. Living miles apart south of Boston with their children, the two friends spun dozens of skeins of wool which they collectively donated to the poor. So, too, did countless other women who gathered in private homes for spinning parties or participated in public spinning contests. To stir patriotic sentiment even hotter, patriotic newspapers offered suggestions about North American substitutes for imported teas, among them sassafras, raspberry and mint.

While patriotism required sacrifice, American women still needed certain manufactured goods and fabrics for their households. Since Abigail's husband, John, and Mercy's son, Winslow, lived in Europe during the last years of the Revolution, those matrons sent for certain household goods and fabrics which they sold or traded to friends and neighbors.

Many women and their children, however, no longer lived in old neighborhoods. Among those who fled from Boston during the British occupation was Abigail and Mercy's friend, Betsy Adams, wife of Samuel Adams, who hid in a humble cottage far from the city.

Loneliness Doesn't Have to Get You Down on Valentine's Day

Today's post is from Jacqueline Olds, MD, co-author with Richard S. Schwartz, MD, of The Lonely American: Drifting Apart in the Twenty-first Century. Drs. Olds and Schwartz are both psychoanalysts and Associate Clinical Professors of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. They have written two other books, Overcoming Loneliness in Everyday Life and Marriage in Motion. Drs. Olds and Schwartz will discuss The Lonely American at the Cambridge Forum, Wednesday, February 11th at 7:30pm. Details here.

Here it is Valentine's Day again... and many of us are thinking, "Oh dear, I'm alone again. How I hate this celebration of couples!" There are in fact a lot of us who live alone (approximately 25% of households are single-person households according to the latest census), and the General Social Survey from 2004 revealed that many of us have no really close confidants. So how are we to cope with such a "holiday" when there seems to be so little to celebrate?

Well, much of the research done on health and social connection does not specify that to achieve longevity, you have to have a Valentine, but it does imply that you have to be socially connected to some small groups in such a way that you schmooze regularly with them. And, even though we don't know for sure whether it lengthens lives, many psychologists stress the benefits of having a couple of people with whom you "can truly be yourself" without worrying about the impression you're making. So one of the worst things you can do if you don't happen to have a Valentine is huddle at home feeling too ashamed to go out and let everyone know that there's no special someone in your life.

Morning Song and Evening Walk by Sonia Sanchez

Today's post, a poem written in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., is from poet, activist, and scholar Sonia Sanchez. Sanchez, one of the most important writers of the Black Arts Movement, is Laura Carnell Professor of English and Women's Studies at Temple University. She is the author of thirteen books, including Shake Loose My Skin: New and Selected Poems, where this poem appears.

Morning Song and Evening Walk

                    1.

Tonite in need of you
and God
I move imperfect
through this ancient city.

Quiet. No one hears
No one feels the tears
of multitudes.

The silence thickens
I have lost the shore
of your kind seasons
who will hear my voice
nasal against distinguished
actors.

O I am tired
of voices without sound
I will rest on this ground
full of mass hymns.

                        2.

You have been here since I can remember Martin
from Selma to Montgomery from Watts to Chicago
from Nobel Peace Prize to Memphis, Tennessee.
Unmoved along the angles and corners
of aristocratic confusion.

It was a time to be born
forced forward a time
to wander inside drums
the good times with eyes like stars
and soldiers without medals or weapons
but honor, yes.

And you told us: the storm is rising against the
privileged minority of the earth, from which there is no
shelter in isolation or armament
and you told us: the storm will
not abate until a just distribution of the fruits of
the earth enables men (and women) everywhere to live
in dignity and human decency.

                        3.

All summerlong it has rained
and the water rises in our throats
and all that we sing is rumored
forgotten.
Whom shall we call when this song comes of age?

And they came into the city carrying their fastings
in their eyes and the young 9-year-old Sudanese
boy said, "I want something to eat at nite a
place to sleep."
And they came into the city hands salivating guns,
and the young 9-year-old words snapped red
with vowels:
Mama mama Auntie auntie I dead I dead I deaddddd.

                        4.

In our city of lost alphabets
where only our eyes strengthen the children
you spoke like Peter like John
you fisherman of tongues
untangling our wings
you inaugurated iron for our masks
exiled no one with your touch
and we felt the thunder in your hands.

We are soldiers in the army
we have to fight, although we have to cry.
We have to hold up the freedom banners
we have to hold it up until we die.

And you said we must keep going and we became
small miracles, pushed the wind down, entered
the slow bloodstream of America
surrounded streets and "reconcentradas," tuned
our legs against Olympic politicians elaborate cadavers
growing fat underneath western hats.
And we scraped the rust from old laws
went floor by floor window by window
and clean faces rose from the dust
became new brides and bridegrooms among change
men and women coming for their inheritance.
And you challenged us to catch up with our
own breaths to breathe in Latinos Asians Native Americans
Whites Blacks Gays Lesbians Muslims and Jews, to gather
up our rainbow-colored skins in peace and racial justice
as we try to answer your long-ago question: Is there
a nonviolent peacemaking army that can shut down
the Pentagon?

And you challenged us to breathe in Bernard Haring's words:
the materialistic growth--mania for
more and more production and more
and more markets for selling unnecessary
and even damaging products is a
sin against the generation to come
what shall we leave to them:
rubbish, atomic weapons numerous
enough to make the earth
uninhabitable, a poisoned
atmosphere, polluted water?


                        5.

"Love in practice is a harsh and dreadful
thing compared to love in dreams," said a Russian writer.
Now I know at great cost Martin that as we burn
something moves out of the flames
(call it spirit or apparition)
till no fire or body or ash remain
we breathe out and smell the world again
Aye-Aye-Aye Ayo-Ayo-Ayo Ayeee-Ayeee-Ayeee
Amen men men men Awoman woman woman woman
Men men men Woman woman woman
Men men Woman woman
Men Woman
Womanmen.

Fundamentalist Family, Secular Christmas

Today's post is from Susan Campbell, author of Dating Jesus: A Story of Fundamentalism, Feminism, and the American Girl. Campbell's writing has been recognized by the American Association of Sunday and Features Editors; National Women's Political Caucus; the Sunday Magazine Editors Association, and the Connecticut chapter of Society of Professional Journalists. She was also a member of the Hartford Courant's 1999 Pulitzer Prize-winning team for breaking news.

While other families lit Advent candles, my brothers and I gathered to hang red bulbs on a fake silver tree that came with a color wheel that turned its branches from red to blue to green.

And we had stockings. They held oranges and a handful of walnuts still in their shells. Looking back, I know now that walnuts were just filler, but back then I could only puzzle as to what use a 6-year-old would have of a walnut still in its shell.

We had gifts and glitter and candles, too. What we didn't have was Baby Jesus.

A Modest Proposal for Your Holiday Correspondence

Today's post is from law professor and humorist Jay Wexler, author of the forthcoming Holy Hullabaloos: A Road Trip to the Battlegrounds of the Church/State Wars. Wexler teaches at the Boston University School of Law. Read more of Jay Wexler's humor at holyhullabaloos.typepad.com.

With Christmas just a few days away and New Year's right around the corner, this is the time when each day my family's mailbox fills up with treasured holiday cards from family, friends, and creepy high school classmates we thankfully haven't seen in twenty years. We love the letters with their welcome updates—a vacation in Europe, a promotion to assistant sales manager, a tumor caught just in time! Our favorite part of these cards, however, has always been the picture. This is our chance to see what you all look like after the passage of another year. Has Father Time treated you well, or could you use some help from the plastic surgery clinic down the street? What kinds of shoes do you fancy, and are your knees still as lovely as I remember? Is your face still symmetrical, or has Father Bell's Palsy paid you a little visit?

Sadly, though, more and more the pictures we receive don't contain images of you at all. Instead, we get measly little photographs of your kids and maybe a pet chinchilla in a sweater with snowflakes on it. This would have shocked the Pilgrims, whose primitive stick-figure Christmas cards always depicted the entire family in their dour black frocks. In fact, it wasn't until the industrial revolution that children occasionally started appearing alone on holiday cards—though these images of dirty child laborers look a bit shocking to our delicate modern sensibilities.

Don't get me wrong: We love kids. We love looking at them, playing with them, dangling yarn around and watching them get all tangled up. What adorable little creatures! But it's you we know, you we once pulled all nighters with in college, you whose shoes we puked on during homecoming. We want to know what you look like after all these years, and even more than that, we'd love to discover what ugly dude you ended up marrying.

Hanukah: Moving Past Two-Mindedness

Today's post is from Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, author of Surprised by God: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Religion. This post originally appeared at her blog.

A lot of people have trouble with Hanukah. I did, for years. I'd go to parties and nibble on my latke or sufganiya while grumbling under my breath about how there was nothing here to celebrate. I'd light my hanukiyah (menorah), but I'd only do the bare minimum needed to fulfill the mitzvah and I'd do my best not to enjoy it.

My problem then, and the problem of the people who this year have already informed me that they're all but going to boycott the holiday, is that the history of this particular celebration is, well… complicated.

The war through which we celebrate Hanukah was, in part, a Jew-on-Jew civil war, in which zealous traditionalists attacked and killed more assimilationist Hellenized Jews. The catalyst for the violent revolution was the reigning Syrian Greek king, Antiochus IV, who demanded that Jews worship false gods and violate the Sabbath, or die. The Jews who refused to do this were not very pleased with the ones who did.

Putting Hussein in Christmas

Today's post is from Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker, co-authors of Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire. Rita Nakashima Brock is a research associate at Starr King School for the Ministry at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. Rebecca Ann Parker, an ordained United Methodist minister in dual fellowship with the Unitarian Universalist Association, is president and professor of theology at Starr King School for the Ministry at the Graduate Theological Union.You can read more about Saving Paradise and see color plates of the art discussed in the book at SavingParadise.net. 

On Sunday, Nov. 30, Daily Kos conducted a poll about whether or not Barack Hussein Obama should use his middle name when he is sworn in on January 20^th. Chris Matthews of NBC had done a morning feature on how Ronald (Wilson) Reagan and Jimmy (Earl) Carter didn't like their middle names and omitted them. Obama could follow suit.

During the election, the right wing emphasized his middle name to suggest that he was not a Christian—as if there is something wrong with being a Muslim, as Colin Powell noted. Nathan Thornburg at Time criticized Candidate Obama for choosing not to defend his middle name, which Thornburg felt reinforced the right-wing use of it to stir up Islamophobia.

We hope President-Elect Obama will use his middle name. We'd look forward to an inauguration that had a few multi-religious overtones. Not just because Islam is one of the great world religions, but because the idea that Christians cannot respect the truths of other religious traditions is a betrayal of its founder Jesus Christ.

Happy Thanksgiving

Our relations to each other, our prayers whispered across generations to our relatives, are what bind our cultures together.—Winona LaDuke, American Indian activist

All of this ugliness and emptiness can be washed away by connecting. We can heal each other through nurturing and sitting in that circle with our relatives and just to hear the word "relative" and know it means you.—Sandra White Hawk, American Indian activist

To share one's food is to demonstrate one's humanity. —Leslie Marmon Silko, American Indian writer

These quotes are included in "Language Is a Place of Struggle": Great Quotes by People of Color, edited by Tram Nguyen.

Home for the Holidays?

Today's post is from Jacqueline Olds, MD, and Richard S. Schwartz, MD, authors of The Lonely American: Drifting Apart in the Twenty-first Century. Drs. Olds and Schwartz are both psychoanalysts and Associate Clinical Professors of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Olds teaches child psychiatry and Dr. Schwartz teaches adult psychiatry at the McLean and Massachusetts General Hospitals. Married to each other and with two grown children, they each maintain a private practice in Cambridge, MA. They have written two other books, Overcoming Loneliness in Everyday Life and Marriage in Motion.

On the front page of the Boston Globe, just beneath the story on surging unemployment, is another headline. "Guess who's not coming to dinner? Amid slump, holiday travel plans stall." The economic crisis threatens to disrupt one of the few moments when we, as Americans, regularly remember that electronic connections can't replace a family meal. Thanksgiving has been the time to emerge from our wired (and wireless) solitude to move real bodies through physical space, over clogged highways and through packed airports to be at the table with our families for the holiday. But even before the economic crisis, it was already tempting not to go.

These days, we can do so much from home – our work, our shopping, our socializing, our game-playing. It's not only convenient; it's also high status. It shows that we have access to all the latest technologies of connection. It shows we are freer than neighbors who are still tied to commutes and schedules. Busyness itself has become high status, an upwardly mobile contest to see who can keep more balls in the air. With so much to do, who has time to run to the store? Or to pack up for the holidays?

Who's Your Mama?

In honor of Mother's Day, Beacon Broadside solicited different perspectives on the holiday. Today's post is from Harlyn Aizley. Aizley edited Confessions of the Other Mother: Nonbiological Lesbian Moms Tell All!  and is the author of Buying Dad: One Woman's Search for the Perfect Sperm Donor. (Cross-posted at her personal blog.)

You'd think Mother's Day among lesbian moms would be an awesome, Doublemint occasion – double your pleasure, double your fun. After all, Mother's Day is not even a Judeo-Christian/Hallmark creation. It actually was birthed in the US some 150 years ago by Appalachian mom Ann Jarvis, who wanted to raise awareness of the poor health conditions in her community. She called it "Mother's Work Day." So for those vernal equinox lesbians more inclined to celebrate the cycles of the moon than the Old or New Testament, Mother's Day is perfect.  It's pro-mom, pro-woman, pro-justice.

Then why the angst?  Why does this lesbian mom secretly dread Mother's Day?  Why do I sadden rather than rejoice when approaching this women fest (an event even bigger and more far-reaching than the Michigan's Women's Festival?)

Because in addition to amplifying the joy, Mother's Day in two-mom households also can shed light on just how complicated it is to share the role of "mother."

Never mind who gets to be called "mom", who gets to sleep in?

Who takes care of dinner and makes a cake?

Who gets the card made from glue and glitter in kindergarten?

A Global Perspective on Mother’s Day

In honor of Mother's Day, Beacon Broadside will feature a handful of posts on the holiday. Today, Sarah LeVine shares her experiences of mother's days around the world. LeVine grew up in England; she was educated at Oxford, the University of Chicago, and Harvard, where she received her Ph.D. and is now an associate in the department of Sanskrit and Indian Studies. Her most recent book, with David Gellner, is Rebuilding Buddhism, and a collection of stories, The Saint of Kathmandu and Other Tales of the Sacred in Distant Lands, is forthcoming from Beacon Press. 

When I came to the US from England in the 1960s, I suffered a good deal from culture shock. In the first place, in contrast with my British undergraduate classmates who rarely mentioned their parents, my Freud-indoctrinated American graduate school classmates, despite being older and, one might have assumed, already well out of the nest, were obsessed with theirs, especially with their mothers. Trading tales of psychological abuse was a favorite pastime. But for all this tension and ambivalence, they still celebrated Mother's Day. In England at that time we had Mothering Sunday on the fourth Sunday of Lent, an Anglican Church festival that was generally ignored. The four per cent of the population who went to church on that particular late winter Sunday thanked God for the care and attention they'd received from their mothers, who were only marginally involved in this thanksgiving. In contrast, Mother's Day in America was a federally-sanctified celebration, a deification of the internalized torturer/seductress, which even in the sixties was poised to out-strip the commercial excesses of Christmas.

I was astounded by the commotion. But then I married an American and had American children who, soon after they could toddle, were deifying me on the second Sunday in May. Almost before I knew it I was receiving cards (handmade in daycare center) and being pressed to stay in bed long after the hour when I was usually out jogging so that, with their father's help, my children could bring my breakfast on a tray.

Rather to my surprise I began to look forward to the Mother's Day commotion.

Link Roundup

I was on a semi-vacation last week, so this week's link roundup is a bit larger than normal. Enjoy!

Howard Zinn is adding to his People's History of the United States with a new graphic novel, A People's History of the American Empire. Read about it at Tom Dispatch, and check out this Viggo Mortensen-narrated clip featuring Mike Konopacki's artwork and Zinn's words. 

Fantastic review of Eboo Patel's Acts of Faith at Beliefnet. And don't miss Patel's excellent post on pluralism vs. diversity over at OnFaith.

...[I]t’s not about whether diversity is good or bad. Diversity is a fact, and in America it's not going away. The question is how to best engage the fact of diversity in a way that builds social capital and increases civic engagement. And when the pluralists don't engage diversity by building positive social bonds, then we leave a vacuum that is often filled by extremists or bigots.

In light of the recent Obama/Wright controversy (read Chris Bracey's take at BlackProf), Terri Gross talked with James Cone, author of Risks of Faith: The Emergence of a Black Theology of Liberation, 1968-1998, about Black Liberation Theology. Also listen to the other interview from that show, with Rev. Dwight Hopkins, for a better understanding of the context Rev. Wright's comments were ripped from.

Kai Wright is in the American Prospect on starting over in AIDS research and in the Dallas Morning News about the danger of the high rate of teen STDs.

Penny Coleman attended the Winter Soldiers' conference, and her thoughtful analysis is appearing on Alternet. Be sure to check out her article about Stop/Loss: "Pentagon Holds Thousands of Americans 'Prisoners of War'."

Rabbi Arthur Waskow urges Jews and others to observe a green Passover.

Kevin Jennings, author of Mama's Boy, Preacher's Son, is a hockey fan. And he doesn't appreciate the homophobic atmosphere at Rangers games.

 

Single at the Holidays: Not Alone, but a Different Kind of Togetherness

by Kay Trimberger

Singles during the Thanksgiving and Christmas/Hanukkah seasons—quintessential family holidays in the U.S.—are stereotyped as lonely, isolated and pathetic. While popular entertainment is now as likely to depict family conflict as well as joy during the holidays, we have noticeably fewer images for singles.

Contrary to stereotypes, my study of long-term, middle-aged single women, found little holiday loneliness and angst. Many of these baby boom single women have large families. They range from Wynona, a divorced single mother in her fifties with four grown children and seven grandchildren to ever-single Emily, in her late thirties with no children of her own, but with meaningful ties to her five siblings and their children.

For other single women with fewer family members—or family who live far away—holiday tension focuses on building new traditions with friends in a culture where friendship is more fluid and less valued than family relationships. I discovered that a network of supportive friends is one of the most important factors that lead to satisfaction with single life. But, at the holidays, family obligations still trump any commitment to friends. Rather than being isolated, single women often face conflicts that are both similar to and different from those in family-based holidays. My own experience is a good example.

‘Eid

by Laila Halaby

Small or large.

Here or there.

That is ‘Eid.

When ‘Eid (either of them—‘Eid al Fitr follows Ramadan and ‘Eid al Adha will be in December) is there, it is a celebration that involves visiting and eating and happiness. Stuffed cabbage and grape leaves, tender lamb, mountains of rice, all consumed in houses at their cleanest, homes whose occupants have pushed aside their troubles for a few days.

When ‘Eid is here, it is all about the telephone and the children getting excited for their gifts, new clothes, and more good food.