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October 2,1941 – Diana Hendry born, UK poet, children’s author, and short story writer; won the 1991 Whitbread Award for best children’s book for Harvey Angell. Her collections of poetry for adults include Making Blue, Borderers, and Late Love: And Other Whodunnits.
To read Diana Hendry’s poem “Watching Telly With You” click:
Again, it is up to women who bear the unrelenting, diabolical, yoke of callous/inhumane misogyny to rise up and fight. Women are engaged in bare-knuckled, in-the-mud, trench warfare, against unjust and cruel calcified patriarchal systems. These seen and unseen self-sacrificial, courageous battles to put down draconian, medieval laws and mores, in order to gain basic, inalienable rights are nothing short of heroic.
The fact that women are still facing chronic oppression, despite the stupendous advances achieved in key areas of human development, is an unmitigated tragedy, and a blight on the sanctity and intrinsic value of human life. Our quest for unconditional equality, and recognition as sentient, sovereign beings, will redound to the benefit of entire humanity – born and unborn.
Whether women are at the vanguard of bold, no-nonsense, action in the corridors of power aka lions’ dens; or laying our lives down in the streets, against brutal sexism ala Iran protests i.e swimming with sharks; or overthrowing the heavy chains of the Dobbs SCOTUS decision, which essentially subjected women to beasts of burden/chattel status; women will rise to the challenge, as per usual.
Women are in the forefront of the fight for the rule of law in the US, and by necessary implication – foundational and imperative tenets of democracy; the absence of which equals an embrace of lawless and violent authoritarianism.
This leap backward into the dark, netherworld of strong man rule, would spell the end of global democracy. In its place, would be anarchy and the law of the jungle.
“Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’ questioning seems to have born belated fruit today when New York Attorney General Letitia James, who has been conducting a civil investigation of former President, Donald Trump’s company, announced a major lawsuit of Trump, three of his adult children and his company over widespread fraud claims, according to CNBC.” – Meryl Ann Butler – OpEd news
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September 24, 1825 – Frances Watkins Harper was born in Baltimore, Maryland, as a free woman; African-American abolitionist, lecturer, poet, and author. She published her first book of poetry at age 20, and became the first American black woman to publish a short story, “Two Offers,” in the Anglo-African in 1859. Her novel Iola Leroy, published in 1892, was widely praised. She was part of the Underground Railroad in the 1850s, and was a public speaker for the American Anti-Slavery Society, and an advocate for woman suffrage and for prohibition. In 1894, she was a co-founder of the National Association of Colored Women, and served as its first vice president.
“Shiny new tulip beds of different shapes and dyes,
bending beneath the invisible west-wind’s sighs.”
– Thomas Moore“Here are the tulips, budded and full-blown,
their swoops and dips, their gloss,
and poses, the satin of their darks.”
– Margaret Atwood“You believe in God, for your part, ay?
That He who makes, can make good things
from ill things, best from worst, as men plant
tulips upon dunghills when they wish them finest.”
– Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.”
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by Nona Blyth Cloud
“THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value.”
― Thomas Paine, The Crisis
Thomas Paine was born in England on February 9, 1737. Paine emigrated to the British American colonies in 1774 with the help of Benjamin Franklin, arriving just in time to help spark the American Revolution. Virtually every rebel read (or listened to a reading of) his 47-page pamphlet Common Sense, proportionally the all-time best-selling American title, which catalysed the rebellious demand for independence from Great Britain. The American Crisis was a pro-revolutionary pamphlet series of essays, later collected into a book. The first pamphlet was published in December 1776. General Washington found this first essay so inspiring, he ordered that it be read to the troops at Valley Forge.
I think that Thomas Paine should be considered the “forgotten” Founding Father. Though he never held public office, he certainly had as much influence on the American Revolution and the establishment of the new country’s system of government as most of the men who are now called our Founding Fathers.
And much of what he wrote then is still very relevant to our current American crisis.
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