Implication

From the moment he took his seat in the classroom, the geeky guy in the third row gazed at me with rapt attention.  Moon eyes. That's what my mother would have labeled the look he was giving me. To be honest, it made me a little nervous. In my years as a trainer, my poetic words about financial software had never inspired that kind of reaction from a seminar participant. Normally, the challenge was keeping them awake.  At the break, he made his way up to the front of the room. Taking my hand, he introduced himself, and my first thought was, "Oh-oh." Grinning mischievously, he said, “You remind me of my wife.  She’s a teacher too.” Relieved, I smiled in acknowledgment.  And then he went on. “It must be the implied whip.”

intoxicating.

 irresisible power,

a whip flick away

***

Submitted to dVerse Poet's Pub Haibun Monday.

Thinking Critically

(Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Social media has opened the door to all manner of debate and discourse. It's a new age forum, a virtual Speakers' Corner, if you will . Unlike the famous Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park in London, home to prophets and proselytizers since the mid 1800s, this one is accessible to all, and one need not even wait a turn at the podium.

Pick a topic, any topic, and Google it. You'll find blogs, chat boards, and something called "affinity spaces." If you have something to say, sites like Facebook, Twitter --and way too many more to mention -- give you a place to say it.

Check this out.



(Source: Brian Solis & JESS3, with permission)

This is a good thing, I guess. Mostly, anyway. But thus a world of "experts" on anything and everything was born. Perhaps the ease of expressing one's thoughts has fostered too much easy thoughtless expression.

I recently posted a citation on a Facebook thread about GMOs. The article I cited had links to several studies claiming GMOs are harmful to humans. I offered no opinion (because I don't know enough to have one), I simply posted the link. Well, down came the wrath of The Gods-of-What's-Happening-Now upon my virtual head. Boom. As an example: "#*&!@%* (name removed to protect the apparently guilty) is a joke, and one becomes a joke when citing it." My bad, because being as uninformed as I am, I didn't know the people behind with article were aligned with the dark side, and nothing I saw when checking it out before posting it told me so.

Now, I have no problem with people expressing their opinions. But something about the tone of certitude many commenters take doesn't sit well with me. I've been thinking about it since, and what bothers me is that some people seem to have forgotten that that's just what their comments are, opinions. And like concrete, opinions set quickly and become immoveable bias or partisanship.

One commenter advised me to check out a link that offered "A Guide to Looking Smart on the Internet." I kid you not; that was the title of the article. He then went on to recommend sites targeting skeptics.

Hmmm, am I a skeptic? I suppose I may appear to be. I hope I'm not, though. The road from skepticism to cynicism is a short one. I would prefer to think of myself as a critical thinker. I wish more people were.

Oh, and about my thoughts on the GMO thing? Like I said, I don't really know much about it. And let's face it, you can find opinions from an army of those aforementioned experts, on either side of the GMO fence, citing research studies to support their position that may or may not be valid. (Beware using one of them in a comment at the Speakers' Corner, however, lest... well, you know.) But here's what I think. There is enough "out there" that says the pesticides used on GMO crops (crops developed by the same companies, by the way, who manufacture the pesticides) may be harmful to humans. That's enough to make me come down on the side of caution, when I can. Unfortunately, since we don't have uniform labeling, it's not always possible, but I try. Thinking critically, you know.

They Walk Among Us

The Scream by Edvard Munch
(Source: Wikipedia)

They walk among us.

They are our friends and neighbors, and even members of our family. They look just like the rest of us. They smile and laugh with us, and chat with us about inconsequential things. And they can be delightfully charming. Unless you knew, you might never know, not from just from looking at them, anyway. Most of them hide it very well.

You all know some of them. You may even be one of them. They are the bigots, the haters. They hate those who are unlike themselves. Whether the difference be that of color, race, religion, nationality, sexual preference, political party, or economic status, anyone who wear that difference so that it shows will be at risk of suffering their bigotry.

They breed and they raise their children to see the world as they do, to hate as they do.

They vote for people who share their hatred.

It terrifies me.

When people I once respected open their mouths and vitriol spews forth, I feel loss.

When my country's elected officials legislate based on hate, I feel shame.

When I see the result of all this hate every day in the newspaper, on the television, and on the streets, I feel fear.

As Goethe said, “There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.”

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

*

The Other Shoe

(Photo by Nick Wiebe
Source: WikiMediaCommons)

You know that old saw that goes "bad things come in threes"? Yeah.

I am generally not a superstitious person. I've broken more mirrors than I can count with no ill effect. I might avoid walking beneath a ladder, but it'd be because I know how hard it is to get paint out of your hair. Not only do I not fear that black cat walking across my path, I'm likely to call him over so I can pet him.  I'm smart enough to know that the fourteenth floor on the hotel is really the thirteenth, but it doesn't bother me. And Friday the Thirteenth? Not only is it not a bad thing; evidence shows that it's my lucky day. I was promoted three times during my working career on Friday the Thirteenth. So, no, I'm not superstitious.

Except...

I admit it. The whole "bad-things-come-in-threes" thing creeps me out. Think about it. It seems that too often, when you hear about a disaster, within hours, you hear about two more. Plane crashes, celebrity deaths, your friends' divorces. The list goes on. I'm sure you have your own list of threes in your life. It happens often enough that when Bad Thing Number One occurs, I find myself waiting for Bad Thing Numbers Two and Three to follow. It's kind of like waiting for the other shoe to drop, and the shoe after that.

Example: Since 1996 when an airline safety website started paying attention, there have been three (and sometimes more) plane crashes occurring within a few days of each other every year but one. Given the infrequency of plane crashes, this seems notable.

Example:  Within the last month, The Sopranos bad guy James Gandolfini, Glee singer Corey Montieth, and just this morning, long-time White House correspondent Helen Thomas all died. Yes, people die all the time, but the only one of these three whose death might be expected was 92-year-old Thomas.

I tell myself that this phenomenon is coincidence. I see disasters in threes because I look for them. OK, that makes sense, right?

Except...

A couple of days ago, another of those "bad-things-come-in-threes" hit, and I definitely wasn't looking for it. If you are a Facebook junkie like me, you know the sorts of things you see on your wall are as varied as your Facebook friends who post them. You see everything from cartoons, photos, rants (political and otherwise), and cute kitten videos to "I burned my toast this morning."  So, when in less than 24 hours, I read heartbreaking posts from three of my good Facebook friends (and folks, I don't have all that many Facebook friends) that his or her beloved dog was horribly ill, was dying, or had already died, I took notice.

I'm not superstitious, but some people believe these things.

At least all three shoes have dropped.

Except...

Native Americans believe the number is four, and the Chinese five.

Hug your pup.

*

Where Am I?

It occurs to me that perhaps I should tell you why you're not seeing me around much. No, I haven't fallen into a black hole. Nor have I run away from home, though I have been tempted from time to time.

For the first time, I am attempting NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). It's a daunting prospect, but friends have done it, and they survived. I'm taking heart from that.

It's day five of this thirty-day challenge to write 50,000 words before the month is done. I'm already behind. According to the NaNoWriMo gizmo that one uses to keep track of progress, at my current rate, I'll finish on December 6. Not good. But I also know that of the 256,618 participants (worldwide) in 2011, 36,843 of them crossed the 50K finish line by the deadline. So I won't be alone if I don't make it.

Anyway, this is where I am, and why I'm not coming around to visit much. I'm sitting at my computer, plugging away on my great American novel, which is currently called "Untitled." Wish me luck!

See you in December.

Coed Naked What?

This is a true story. I’ve changed the names (except for her middle name, which even she made fun of) to protect the two funny people who had this exchange.

They had a lot in common, though neither would ever admit it. 

She was Carmelita Immaculata Concepción Gonzalez Jones.  He was Juan Perez.

They were both software specialists: she an end-user application consultant, he a technical consultant. Their jobs were to provide customers with telephone support, and each felt the problem could always be placed at the doorstep of the other side. To her, it was never user error; it was always a technical issue with the software. To him, the software was perfect, if only the lame-brained customers would learn how to use it.

They were both Hispanic Americans: she of Cuban descent, he of Argentinian. They each claimed El Che, the "Guerrillero Heroico," as a native son of the homeland.

She spent much of her childhood living outside the US and spoke with a slight Spanish accent.  He’d grown up in the States and had no accent at all, but he took great delight in teasing her about hers by mimicking it. 

She was a fairly serious person, and generally not given to frivolous behavior. He was the department clown, and rarely suffered a serious moment.

They sat in adjacent cubicles. She wanted nothing to do with him, and nothing gave him greater pleasure than baiting her.

Their ongoing battle across the cubical wall was a great source of entertainment for everyone. Well, for everyone except Carmelita Immaculata Concepción Gonzalez Jones, perhaps.

***

Day 1 of the Apocalypse

He: “Hey, Carmelita. Did choo wash that game on TV last night?”

She: “What game? I didn’t see any game."

He: “It was on one of the es-spanish language channels. Late, around midnight, I thin.”

She: “No, I don’t watch TV that late. I rarely watch the Spanish language channels. And, for heaven's sake, stop talking like that.”

He: “Oh, choo missed a really gray game.”

She: “What was it?”

He: “Coed naked bolleyball.”

She: “What? Coed naked volleyball? They played naked volleyball on TV?”

He: “No, no, this was different. Coed naked bolleyball. Oh, chjess, gray game.”

She: “No. Go away. You’re an idiot.”

***

Day 2 of the Apocalypse

He: “Carmeleeeta…”

She: (sigh) “What?”

He:  “It was on again last night. It’s a tournament, I thin. The Coed Naked Bolleyball Tournament.”

She:  “No.”

He:  “Choo gotta es-see it. It’s awesome. Coed naked …”

She:  “Stop.”

He:  “But…”

She: (walks away)

***

Day 3 of the Apocalypse

He: “Oh, boy. ¡Ay caramaba! What a game that waz.

She: (menacingly) “Juan. Do. Not. Start.”

He: (innocently) “What?”

She: “You know what. Don’t do it.”

He: “Do what? I waz joos gonna …”

She: “Oh, I know what you ‘waz joos gonna’ do. Cut it out.”

He: “Huh? I waz joos gonna tell choo about the finale of the coed naked…”

She: “Stop!”

He: “But, the finale waz…”

She: “If you don’t stop this nonsense and leave me alone, it’s going to be the finale of you.” (leaves in high dudgeon)

***

The Finale of the Apocalypse… and Juan

He: (walking toward his desk) “Oh, Carmelita…” 

She: (sweetly) “Hello, Juan. How are you today?”

He: (throwing himself into his desk chair with his usual exuberance) "So last night... Ah, ah, ah... what the hell?"

She: (snicker)

 

She: (whispering) "Gotcha, amigo." 

He: “What the hell happened to my chair???”

She: "Sí, bery funny, Juan, don't choo thin?"

***

Remembered for The Tenth Daughter of Memory

Meanwhile, Up in the Attic

whipping winds threatening

to wrench the microphone from their hands,

TV reporters stand on the shore,

backdroppped by rolling waves of Irene’s fury,

repeating the same frantic phrases, lamenting

the fate of coastal cities and towns.

over and over, hour upon hour, day after day,

the same video loops crashing waves and

boarded windows as Irene and the “news” roll on.

local meteorologists try but fail to keep excitement

from their eyes as they do their thing at the map, thrilled

to take center stage with something important to say.

and then it passes, and Irene becomes less,

no longer newsworthy as she leaves New York behind.

the guy at the map talks of sunshine and fair winds,

no longer excited but, boy, what a ride.

recaps include video, but we saw it two days ago. "still,

she was one for the books," he murmurs with pride.

meanwhile, up at the top of the country, Irene

has the last word, but except for the locals,

there’s no one who hears. Like old toys and

broken furniture out of sight up in the rafters,

they are trapped there, isolated and forgotten,

as things in the attic frequently are.

Mo-om!

She’s his mother, and he loves her. Of course he does. But, sometimes?  Holy guacamole.

***

“I have to run some errands.  Want to come along?”  His mother has been bustling around all morning, and is now shoving stuff into her already overstuffed handbag.  How she carries that thing, he can’t imagine.  Not that he knows anything about physics, but if he did, physics would probably say that the weight of that bag hanging off her body would rip her shoulder right out of the socket.  

She pauses at the door and looks back at him.  “You coming?”

The fourteen-year-old is home from school today.  It’s the first snow day of the year.  He’s been watching an old Star Trek rerun, but he’s seen it about umpty-nine times.  Besides, he likes spending time with his mother.  Usually.  He doesn't see much of his dad since the divorce, and ever since his older sister left for college, it’s been just the two of them.  He decides to tag along.

“OK.  Hey, Mom, can we get a hamburger at Shaunessys?”    He’s pretty sure that he’ll see some of the guys at the luncheonette in the front of the popular variety store.  Maybe he can spend the afternoon with them.

“Sure, but let’s get a move on.  I have a lot of stops before then.  Put your boots on.  The snow looks pretty deep.”  His mom heads out the door.  “Lock the door behind you.”

The boy stops in the front hall, pulls on his boots and grabs his jacket from the jumble of garments hanging from the coat rack.  After zipping up, he reaches into the jacket pockets and yanks out his hat and gloves and puts them on as he hurries to catch up with her.

***

They make their way around town, stopping at the gas station, bank, drug store, and dry cleaners.  At each stop, the boy waits in the car fiddling with the radio dial while his mother goes in and takes care of business.

“One last stop at the post office, and then we can go eat,” she says as she hangs the cleaning from the hook behind the driver’s seat.

Finding a parking spot on Main Street is difficult.  The plowed snow fills some of the available spaces.  But after a trip around the block, his mother finds a space about midway between the post office and Shaunessy’s on the opposite side of the street, half a block away.  As they cruised past Shaunessy’s the first time, the boy spotted a few of his friends sitting in a booth at the window and he's glad he decided to come along.

“Come inside with me, please.  I’ve got to pick up some packages in addition to the regular mail, and I think I’ll need your help.”  

His mother works at home, doing bookkeeping for several small businesses in the area, and she likes to joke that her office is in a post office box.  

The wide flight of stone steps in front of the double doors of the post office are still slightly icy in places.  They pick their way up and push through the doors into the warmth inside.  His mother gets the packages from the clerk at the counter and hands them to the boy.  Then she collects the envelopes from her “office” and they head out to drop the mail in the car before going over to Shaunessy’s.

As they start down the steps out front, the boy hears a slight yelp from his mother and looks over to see her sitting on the top step.  To his horror, she continues down the remaining steps, bumping along on her butt like a demented slinky or something.

He just keeps walking and goes straight to the car.  Out of the corner of his eye, he can see his mother get to her feet, brush herself off, and gather up the mail that went flying when she went down.  He's pretty sure his friends across the street at Shaunessy’s must have seen the whole performance.  When she gets to the car, he turns to her, his face now flaming red with embarrassment.

“Mo-om!  How could you?”

***********************************

Written for the Tenth Daughter of Memory

I should say "thanks," right?

It was a good thing, right?

My 17-year-old self had tried for so long to be like him,

That older brother, thirteen years smarter and wiser,

That sibling held so high in esteem by the parent

I could never please, no matter how hard I tried,

The ideal cited in the frequent exhortation,

“Why can’t you be more like your brother?”

So if my brother said it, it must be good, right?  

 

 “You drive like a man.”

It meant I’d finally done something right.

Right?

Then why did it feel so wrong?

***********************************

This is my entry in One Shot Wednesday.

She Speaks

This is a repost of today's post on PattiKen and the Muses - Home Away From Home.  I don't normally do this, but this one is important enough to make an exception.

Besides, I'm a proud Mama. ;-)

********************************

You have all read my posts in which I told you about my daughter Lisa and her fight against breast cancer.  She is The Superhero I wrote about.

Today, she speaks for herself.   These are her words.


Mine Is Not To Ask Why

This month, a little more than most, I think about what I have been through, what I have lost, and what I have gained. I never ask, “why me?” I am always grateful it was me. I had my mother’s strength and my father’s stubbornness to get me through it. Someone else may not have been a lucky as I was…am.


October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, but for some of us, those like me and our families, every month is breast cancer awareness month.   When you hear those words, “you have cancer,” you are never more aware.   That feeling, the awareness, it never leaves you.

Tonight I sat with my daughter and watched a speech by Kelly Corrigan (breast cancer survivor, author) posted by my mother.  Emily and I held hands and cried together, grateful for what we have gained and all that we are lucky to still have…each other.

Sure, I have been through what some call “Hell,” but I never saw it that way. For me, it was just a journey to get to the other side.  Just one more thing to get past and then move on.  People sometimes say to me, “so-and-so died of cancer.”  My only response can ever be, “I’m not doing that.”



For me, having treatment and getting on with my life was the only choice.  IS the only choice. Surviving is the ONLY choice.

Now, I use my experiences to make others aware of just how a diagnosis of cancer can change your life, even if it’s not you who is diagnosed.   My cancer affected everyone around me: my parents, my husband, my little boys, and my daughter.  Now I spread the word through my writing, my big mouth, and by walking the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer every year and raising money for research and other programs.

Mine is to do.

Friday Flash 55: You Remind Me of My Wife

From the moment he took his seat in the training room, he sat at rapt attention.  At the break, he came up to the front of the room. 

“You remind me of my wife,” he said.  “She’s a teacher too.”

I smiled in acknowledgment.  And then he went on.

“It must be the implied whip.”

**********************************

This, a totally true story from my days as a trainer, is my offering for Friday Flash 55, hosted by G-Man at Mr. KnowItAll.

The Memory Beneath the Bed

Watching her dance with joy, he clenches his mind tightly and vows to hold onto this moment. He reminds himself that the day will come when she’s no longer here and he will want to take the memory out like a cherished amulet carried in his pocket and feel its beauty in his hand.

And then, inevitably, she is gone.  Because life distracted him and he forgotten to pay attention, to appreciate her devotion and reward it with his grateful touch, he was taken by surprise by her departure.  Alone, he walks paths they once walked together and he tries to conjure up her presence.  He reaches into the pocket of his mind, but all he finds is a void filled with nothing but lint.

It seems that she was always there, a part of his life for so long.  Learning to “be” without her seems impossible. He expects her to come around the next corner, breaking into a big smile when she sees him.  He sees her out of the corner of his mind, and turns to find emptiness.  

Eventually he forgets to look for her. He's on his hands and knees one day, looking under the bed chair for a missing sock and thinking that he can’t blame her for losing this one.  When he shines his flashlight into the darkness under the bed, he doesn’t see the sock.  Instead, the beam catches sight of one perfect brown curl of hair, laying on the carpet.  Suddenly his mind unclenches and she is there, dancing with joy, and slurping moist doggy kisses all over his face.

100-Word Challenge: The Corporate Lamp Standard

Suffering terrible headaches from the flickering overhead neon lights in her office, she asked a co-worker where she’d gotten attractive table lamp on her desk. 

“It’s in the supply catalog. Just order one.”

She completed the order request and submitted it.

Late one afternoon, a man with a clipboard appeared at her office door. 

“I’m from Facilities,” he said. “Did you order a lamp?”

‘Yes! Are you delivering it?”

“No, sorry. Rotten luck! That lamp doesn’t meet our Corporate Lamp Standard.”

“Well, what would meet the standard?” she asked.

“I don’t know. We haven’t set it yet.”

***

True story.

*************************************

This is my offering for the 100-Word Challenge, hosted by Velvet Verbosity.  The prompt this week "rotten."

Wandering the Corridors of Time

Twenty years after graduation, she went back to her high school in search of the youth she’d lost somewhere along the way.  Stopping first at the office for a hall pass, she wandered through the familiar corridors.

Here’s where we rolled soda cans down the aisle during assembly, she thought.  And here’s where he used to meet me after 5^th period.

The bell rang, and the corridor filled with students.  A boy with purple and green hair looked at her oddly, and then came over.

“May I help you, Ma’am?”

She sighed.  I think my youth has left the building.

**********************************

This is my entry for this week's 100-Word Challenge, hosted by Velvet Verbosity.  The prompt this week is "corridor."

Buster Brown and the X-Ray Machine

I have big feet, which always seemed somewhat unavoidable, as these things go. I come from a family of Sasquatch. The footprints my brother leaves in the forest while hiking in the Pacific Northwest brings out the National Enquirer and legions of Bigfoot spotters. So there was little hope for his little sister to have dainty ballerina feet. And that’s not the all of it. Not only are my feet big, they’re ugly. Cinderella’s mean step-sisters ugly.

Yesterday, I had an epiphany. An ah-ha moment. I was walking down Main Street (with my solid “under-standing,” as my husband -- who loves me in spite of my feet -- says) and I passed a shoe store. Up on the marquee over the store front was a picture, faded but still quite visible, that I remember well from my childhood.

I can even hear his voice: "I'm Buster Brown, I live in a shoe. That's my dog, Tige, he lives there too!"

I immediately flashed to my mother taking me into the Buster Brown shoe store to get new shoes for school. And that’s when my ah-ha moment struck. One of the perks of buying a kid’s shoes at Buster Brown was that a mother could be confident of a good fit for her little darling’s feet. How? They used a fluoroscope to view the child’s foot inside the shoe, thus ensuring those little toes were perfectly and comfortably shod. And for the kid, well, it was fun. I mean, it was all very Flash Gordon, wasn’t it?

But, see, here’s the rub (so to speak). A fluoroscope performs its x-ray vision with, you guessed it, x-rays! X-rays! As we now know, over-exposure to x-rays is not a good thing. If you doubt that, just look what it did to Buster’s dog, poor thing. I wore Buster Brown shoes for years. Years of being zapped by the fluoroscope.

No wonder my feet are unnaturally awful. I’ve got gamma ray feet!

Hmm, I wonder if I can get into some kind of class action suit…

Portrait of the Landscape Artist

Edith was a spry little old lady who lived somewhere north of 80 years old. She also lived at the corner of my street, in a neatly kept little house that was painted gray with bright green shutters. There was never anyone else there, so I always pictured her life as one of solitude shared only with her cat, a big and very round fellow named Roscoe.

I never saw Edith during the winter. Snow and cold made my joints ache, so I can only imagine what they did to hers. But during the warm months, she was frequently outside in front of her house with Roscoe, where both warmed old bones in the therapeutic sun.   I might stop and chat a bit if she were there as I passed on my way home. I’m a cat person, so Roscoe provided for some weighty (so to speak) discussion.   Frequently,  she'd be tending the colorful flowers blooming in the pots on her wisp of a front porch – snip snip – to the melodies of Debussy or Tchaikovsky drifting from inside the house. Music, she told me once, soothed the flowers’ souls and made them happy.

Forty years have past. I have long been gone from Edith’s neighborhood, and so has she. But the images of her, lovingly caring for her plants and murmuring to them as a mother would to a child as music flowed gently around her, have stayed with me all these years. My favorite memory of Edith is a mental snapshot taken one lawn-cutting day. Her house sat on a postage stamp-sized lot, but the lawn in front of the house was the stuff of Scott’s Turf Builder advertisements. It was lush, green, weed-free, and trimmed to perfection, thanks to Edith’s ministrations. Every Friday afternoon would find Edith, crawling around the lawn on her hands and knees, scissors in hand, trimming her tiny lawn – snip snip - and murmuring to it as a mother would to a child as the music played on.

The Summer of Our Discontent

On August 18, 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was passed, 72 years after a handful of brave and determined women began the battle to give women in the United States the right to vote. That it took 144 years from the time the country was founded for this right to be granted is shameful.

*****

It was a hot day in July 1848. They gathered in Seneca Falls, NY, a small town on the edge of Van Cleef Lake. But it was not a picnic that drew them together on that day so many years ago.  It was discontent.

*****

Jane Hunt
Photograph from A History of Waterloo, John Becker.

Jane Hunt was married to the richest man in Seneca County. He referred to himself as a farmer, but in reality he was an active land speculator and industrialist. Jane and her family lived in a stately home on Main Street in Waterloo, NY, enjoying all the comforts afforded them by their financial status. Jane should have been content, but something was wrong. She wasn’t sure she could articulate it, but her comfortable life chafed at her sensibilities.


A member of the Quaker faith, Jane took comfort from the friends she worshipped with at monthly Meeting. She was especially close to Mary Ann M’Clintock, a relative by marriage and a respected leader of the church. They strongly believed in community, and the women often met to discuss of how they could put that belief into action. As Jane’s husband Richard often reminded her, faith without works brought few results.


They learned that Lucretia Mott, a well-know minister and reformer from Philadelphia, was visiting family nearby and decided to invite her to come and meet with them. Jane offered her front parlor for the meeting. Lucretia brought her sister Martha, and Jane invited Elizabeth, a friend who was not a Quaker, but just as committed to social reform as the others.


Over tea and cookies, the women talked. Discussing their lives, as women do, they soon realized that they all shared the same discontent. And if they did, what of other women? Elizabeth had been speaking of her feelings to anyone who would listen for years, and among these Quaker women, she found a sympathetic ear. She also found compatriots who were willing to put their words into action.


That afternoon, the seed of change was sown.

Lucretia wanted very much to be a part of whatever action they took, but she didn’t have much time before she must return to Philadelphia and her responsibilities there. The women decided to hold a public meeting where other women could be heard, and they drafted a notice that the meeting would be held the following week at the Wesleyan Church. Elizabeth volunteered to deliver it to the newspaper office on her way home, and the notice was published two days later. In the days before the meeting, a second meeting was held to draft a document for discussion. Elizabeth then took the document home and edited it, and created the first draft of what would be known as The Declaration of Sentiments. Taking her cues from the Declaration of Independence, she began, “When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary…”

On July 19 and 20, the women met again, this time joined by more than 300 others, including a handful of men and children. On the first day, the women discussed the Declaration and the absence of women’s rights in the United States. On the second day, the men joined the discussion, and at the end of the day, a vote was taken to ratify the Declaration.

American Treasures Collection

Library of Congress

Sadly, at the end of that day, nothing much changed. It was at the end of over 26,000 additional days that the seed planted in Seneca Falls, NY on that hot day in July 1848 grew to bear fruit.  But Jane Hunt, Mary Ann M’Clintock, Lucretia Mott, Martha Wright and Elizabeth Cady Stanton never doubted.

The five women (Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Martha Wright, Lucretia Mott, 

Jane Hunt, Mary Ann McClintock) 

who issued the call for the Convention. 

Photographs from A History of Waterloo, John Becker.

*****

To learn more, read the Report of the Women’s Rights Convention and the Declaration of Sentiments.
.

100 Word Challenge: Epidemic

Rx: Chicken Soup?

I'm not sure how the epidemic began.

First to show symptoms was the desktop computer. One minute it's feeling fine, the next it's moaning, ”Ow, ow, my config.sys file.” The doc said he'd be right over.

As I awaited his arrival, I brought in a less qualified temp to pick up the slack, a netbook normally used for roadwork. Before the doc even got to the house, the netbook collapsed, holding its hard drive and vomiting bogus messages and links to questionable websites (why it thought Viagra would help, I can't imagine!)

Groan.  I'm not feeling so well myself.

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Update:  OK, so the desktop is home from the hospital,and is not only healthy again, but thinner (as sometimes happens after being sick).  In this case, that's not a good thing, though.  And so, I'm still not feeling so well. Seems the "doc" had to reformat the hard drive. Which means I have to reinstall every piece of software.  Arrgghh!
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Theme Thursday: Candy

My favorite candy has always been turtles. You know, those oddly-shaped little chocolate-covered-gooey-caramel-with-pecan  morsels.  Yummy, yummy. But how they came to be my favorite is a bit of a good news/bad news story.

The good news? When I was about nine years old, my Dad would sometimes take me with him when he made some of his rounds, and at one of the stops, the owner always gave me a few turtles.  I quickly put them at the top of my list of favorites, above such ordinary candies as Tootsie Rolls and Necco Wafers (well, except maybe for the black ones).  I mean, who wouldn't?

The bad new? Those rounds I went on with Dad were to bars. Some of the bartenders did have pistachio nuts, though, so it wasn't all bad.  Except for the red fingers.

In a more current nod to candy, here's a musical offering.