Wednesday, September 08, 2004
I HAVE THE BEST DAD IN THE WORLD...
...AND TODAY HE TURNED 60. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DADDY!
My Dad is the most amazing man I know. For most of his life he's been a completely devoted husband and father to an incredibly blessed family. I'm his oldest, and most would say the most outspoken. As many times as I've said "I love you," I know I won't ever think it's enough to express my appreciation for all he's done for me in my life.
In many ways Dad and I are as opposite as night and day. His habits are immaculate; I've never been in a room I couldn't mess up in five minutes or less. He values peace and quiet; I thrive in chaos and discord. He's friendly but reserved; I start conversations with complete strangers. His demeanor is calm and even; I can make a cup of coffee jittery.
But we have so much more in common. From the time I was born he shared and nurtured my love for music and politics. Countless hours have been spent together listening to Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and ABBA; countless dinners of steaks and chicken from his grill have been devoured while debating the political and social issues of the day. We love the same foods - our mutual favorites being a good steak with a glass of red wine or good ol' Texas barbecue with a cold beer, preferably a Guinness. We share a touch of wanderlust, and still enjoy traveling together to places near and far. I appreciate our mutual love of baseball every time I attend a game, and call him from each new stadium I visit. And in case you were wondering where I got it, we also share a biting sense of humor and an appreciation for the absurd.
My Dad taught me all the important things in life. He taught me to ride a bike, rollerskate, play chess and baseball. He taught me how to drive a car; and before he allowed me to drive on my own, he also taught me how to change a tire, pump my own gas, and check the oil and fluids.
But so much of what my Dad taught me isn't about skills or tasks. Far more importantly, he taught me how to live my life. By word and example, he taught me that my opinions are valued and appreciated; that discrimination in any form is wrong; that any task is not done until it's done right; that omission of the truth is the same as a lie; that I should always make up my own mind and not be afraid to express it. He taught me how to disagree with others without being disagreeable. And most of all, he's taught me by his own example that unconditional love is real and my family is the most important thing in my life.
I love you, Dad. I hope your 60th birthday was a blessed one, and that you will be a part of our lives for at least 60 more...
My Dad is the most amazing man I know. For most of his life he's been a completely devoted husband and father to an incredibly blessed family. I'm his oldest, and most would say the most outspoken. As many times as I've said "I love you," I know I won't ever think it's enough to express my appreciation for all he's done for me in my life.
In many ways Dad and I are as opposite as night and day. His habits are immaculate; I've never been in a room I couldn't mess up in five minutes or less. He values peace and quiet; I thrive in chaos and discord. He's friendly but reserved; I start conversations with complete strangers. His demeanor is calm and even; I can make a cup of coffee jittery.
But we have so much more in common. From the time I was born he shared and nurtured my love for music and politics. Countless hours have been spent together listening to Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and ABBA; countless dinners of steaks and chicken from his grill have been devoured while debating the political and social issues of the day. We love the same foods - our mutual favorites being a good steak with a glass of red wine or good ol' Texas barbecue with a cold beer, preferably a Guinness. We share a touch of wanderlust, and still enjoy traveling together to places near and far. I appreciate our mutual love of baseball every time I attend a game, and call him from each new stadium I visit. And in case you were wondering where I got it, we also share a biting sense of humor and an appreciation for the absurd.
My Dad taught me all the important things in life. He taught me to ride a bike, rollerskate, play chess and baseball. He taught me how to drive a car; and before he allowed me to drive on my own, he also taught me how to change a tire, pump my own gas, and check the oil and fluids.
But so much of what my Dad taught me isn't about skills or tasks. Far more importantly, he taught me how to live my life. By word and example, he taught me that my opinions are valued and appreciated; that discrimination in any form is wrong; that any task is not done until it's done right; that omission of the truth is the same as a lie; that I should always make up my own mind and not be afraid to express it. He taught me how to disagree with others without being disagreeable. And most of all, he's taught me by his own example that unconditional love is real and my family is the most important thing in my life.
I love you, Dad. I hope your 60th birthday was a blessed one, and that you will be a part of our lives for at least 60 more...
TICK TOCK, TIME'S UP ON GOP LIES
60 MINUTES II - NEW QUESTIONS ON BUSH GUARD DUTY
This story aired tonight on 60 Minutes II on CBS. The link includes video from the interview Dan Rather had with former Texas Speaker and Lt. Governor Ben Barnes.
FOG OF WAR
Additionally, the latest Houston Press notes that several people around Texas have filed official ethics complaints with the State Bar of Texas against John O'Neill, the author of Unfit for Command. This is the work of fiction that the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" are basing their false allegations regarding Kerry's record in Vietnam. The complaints all state that O'Neill has vilolated Texas Bar ethics by blatantly lying. Interesting thought - that the truth about O'Neill's book could be exposed not in the political arena, but in a disbarment hearing in Texas...?
Those Swift Boat Veterans' ads are sinking fast...
Thursday, September 02, 2004
HOW WOMEN GOT THE VOTE
This has been published widely via email. I found the original source, a column in the Rock River News in Rockford, Illinois.
The women were innocent and defenseless. And by the end of the night, they were barely alive. Forty prison guards wielding clubs and their warden’s blessing went on a rampage against the 33 helpless women wrongly convicted of “obstructing sidewalk traffic.”
They beat Lucy Burn, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air. They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack.
Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women. Thus unfolded the “Night of Terror” on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket Woodrow Wilson’s White House for the right to vote.
For weeks, the women’s only water came from an open pail. Their food—all of it colorless slops—was infested with worms. When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press.
So, refresh my memory. Some women won’t vote this year because—why, exactly? We have car pool duties? We have to get to work? Our vote doesn’t matter? It’s raining?
Last week, I went to a sparsely attended screening of HBO’s new movie Iron Jawed Angels. It is a graphic depiction of the battle these women waged so I could pull the curtain at the polling booth and have my say. I am ashamed to say I needed the reminder.
There was a time when I knew these women well. I met them in college—not in my required American history courses, which barely mentioned them, but in women’s history class. That’s where I found the irrepressibly brave Alice Paul—her large, brooding eyes seemed fixed on my own as she stared out from the page. “Remember!” she silently beckoned. Remember. I thought I always would.
I registered voters throughout college and law school, worked on congressional and presidential campaigns until I started writing for newspapers. When Geraldine Ferraro ran for vice president, I took my 9-year-old son to meet her. “My knees are shaking,” he whispered after shaking her hand. “I’m never going to wash this hand again.”
All these years later, voter registration is still my passion. But the actual act of voting had become less personal for me, more rote. Frankly, voting often felt more like an obligation than a privilege. Sometimes it was even inconvenient.
My friend Wendy, who is my age and studied women’s history, saw the HBO movie, too. When she stopped by my desk to talk about it, she looked angry. She was. With herself. “One thought kept coming back to me as I watched that movie,” she said. “What would those women think of the way I use—or don’t use—my right to vote?”
All of us take it for granted now, not just younger women, but those of us who did seek to learn. The right to vote, she said, had become valuable to her “all over again.”
HBO will run the movie periodically before releasing it on video and DVD. I wish all history, social studies and government teachers would include the movie in their curriculum. I want it shown on Bunko night, too, and anywhere else women gather. I realize this isn’t our usual idea of socializing, but we are not voting in the numbers that we should be, and I think a little shock therapy is in order.
It is jarring to watch Woodrow Wilson and his cronies try to persuade a psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane so that she could be permanently institutionalized. And it is inspiring to watch the doctor refuse. Alice Paul was strong, he said, and brave. That didn’t make her crazy. The doctor admonished the men: “Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity.”
Beverly Davies is a Rockford resident.
WOMEN WHO DARED
By Beverly Davies
The women were innocent and defenseless. And by the end of the night, they were barely alive. Forty prison guards wielding clubs and their warden’s blessing went on a rampage against the 33 helpless women wrongly convicted of “obstructing sidewalk traffic.”
They beat Lucy Burn, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air. They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack.
Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women. Thus unfolded the “Night of Terror” on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket Woodrow Wilson’s White House for the right to vote.
For weeks, the women’s only water came from an open pail. Their food—all of it colorless slops—was infested with worms. When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press.
So, refresh my memory. Some women won’t vote this year because—why, exactly? We have car pool duties? We have to get to work? Our vote doesn’t matter? It’s raining?
Last week, I went to a sparsely attended screening of HBO’s new movie Iron Jawed Angels. It is a graphic depiction of the battle these women waged so I could pull the curtain at the polling booth and have my say. I am ashamed to say I needed the reminder.
There was a time when I knew these women well. I met them in college—not in my required American history courses, which barely mentioned them, but in women’s history class. That’s where I found the irrepressibly brave Alice Paul—her large, brooding eyes seemed fixed on my own as she stared out from the page. “Remember!” she silently beckoned. Remember. I thought I always would.
I registered voters throughout college and law school, worked on congressional and presidential campaigns until I started writing for newspapers. When Geraldine Ferraro ran for vice president, I took my 9-year-old son to meet her. “My knees are shaking,” he whispered after shaking her hand. “I’m never going to wash this hand again.”
All these years later, voter registration is still my passion. But the actual act of voting had become less personal for me, more rote. Frankly, voting often felt more like an obligation than a privilege. Sometimes it was even inconvenient.
My friend Wendy, who is my age and studied women’s history, saw the HBO movie, too. When she stopped by my desk to talk about it, she looked angry. She was. With herself. “One thought kept coming back to me as I watched that movie,” she said. “What would those women think of the way I use—or don’t use—my right to vote?”
All of us take it for granted now, not just younger women, but those of us who did seek to learn. The right to vote, she said, had become valuable to her “all over again.”
HBO will run the movie periodically before releasing it on video and DVD. I wish all history, social studies and government teachers would include the movie in their curriculum. I want it shown on Bunko night, too, and anywhere else women gather. I realize this isn’t our usual idea of socializing, but we are not voting in the numbers that we should be, and I think a little shock therapy is in order.
It is jarring to watch Woodrow Wilson and his cronies try to persuade a psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane so that she could be permanently institutionalized. And it is inspiring to watch the doctor refuse. Alice Paul was strong, he said, and brave. That didn’t make her crazy. The doctor admonished the men: “Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity.”
Beverly Davies is a Rockford resident.
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