I have always loved the month May. In the area of the U.S. in which I grew up May was filled with blossoms. Probably due to being a May baby, the lilac blossoms, peony blossoms, trillium, lily of the valley, hepatica, and so many more seemed like they heralded the arrival of my personal holiday.
May is a boom time for blooms. What is blooming where you live? Saguaros are not quite blooming,yet, a bit early, where I live. But many cactuses are in blossom. What is the the official flower of your state? (
May 1st
May Day
May is welcomed in with celebration, or at least it once was. May Day, May 1st, was a time for festivals, maypoles, may baskets, May Queen, washing in the early morning dew so you will be beautiful throughout the year. May Day traditions lived on in the Rural United States with pageants, Queens, and poles through the early part of the 20th Century. (6 prompts.) And then of course there is the enigmatic Led Zeppelin lyric involving, “a spring clean for the May Queen.”
Labor Day
And of course everywhere but the U.S., or so it seems, observes Labor Day on May 1. International Workers of the World and all that.
Beltane
Beltane was observed in Celtic regions on May 1st and most likely was forebearer of the more recent May Day. Beltane is the halfway point between Spring Equinox and Summer Solstice. Beltane would be the beginning of Summer in any calendar that considers the Summer Solstice to be the height of Summer, the longest day, and often the hottest day of the year.
Mothers and Others
May closes the contemporary rituals of Spring that celebrate the female and renewal. We have those? Yes we do! International Women’s Day, March 8th, starts the contemporary celebration of women. Earth Day follows as the second node of this new tripartite set of events. Mother’s Day of course provides the third point.
Mother’s Day as a “card and cake” celebration is a recent invention and not one ever intended to be celebrated so superficially. I previously wrote about the Two Mothers of Mother’s Day. Both trace to the post-Civil War era when the U.S. was still mourning the staggering loss of life in that war and dealing with the self loathing associated with the slaughter of kindred. But as that article states the momentum toward creating a Mother’s Day that remembers the sentiments behind its conception.
In the meanwhile, let us remember all mothers throughout time. The love of mothers through time is proved time and again, most recently in the 4,800 years old remains of a mother and child found in Taiwan.
Now moving from scenes of birth to celebrations of birth, let us turn to women worthy of a few words by you, if you are so inclined:
May 4, 1916 (2006) – Jane Jacobs, journalist, author, and urban studies activist, wrote The Death and Life of the Great American Cities in 1961. She opposed the “urban renewal” that demolished supposed urban blight and destroyed vibrant, urban, and chaotic communities.
May 5, 1942 (1998) – Tammy Wynette, country music singer, after first success in 1967 had more than 20 songs go to #1, Grammy Award for “Stand By Your Man” (1968)
May 5, 1864 (1922) – Elizabeth Seaman, pen name “Nellie Bly,” investigative journalist, wrote expose of mental asylum (1887), set a record for circling the world in 72 days (1890)
May 11, 1894 (1991) – Martha Graham, modern dance innovator and choreographer, first dancer to perform at the White House
May 12, 1907 (2003) – Katharine Hepburn, actor, performed for more than 60 years, won four Academy Awards for best actress including “The Philadelphia Story” and “On Golden Pond,” named top American screen legend of all time by American Film Institute (1999)
May 18, 1970 – Tina Fey, television writer, producer, and actor, first female head writer for “Saturday Night Live” (1999), creator of television series “30 Rock”, youngest winner of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor (2010)
May 26, 1951 (2012) – Sally Ride, astrophysicist, first American woman astronaut
May 26, 1924 (1977) – Thelma Hill, dancer, choreographer, educator, co-founder of the New York Negro Ballet Company (1954), one of the founders of the dance troupe that became the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, after an injury focused on teaching dance
Rachel Carson , 1940. Official Fish and Wildlife Portrait.
May 27, 1907 (1964) – Rachel Carson, scientist, environmentalist, and author of several books. “The Silent Spring” which became a cornerstone of the modern environmental protection movement was her most successful and influential work.
Women’s Achievements of May
May 1, 1950 – Gwendolyn Brooks becomes the first African-American woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. named Library of Congress’s Consultant in Poetry (later called Poet Laureate) in 1985
May 8, 1914 – Anna Garvis succeeds in having an official day honoring her mother and all the mothers that held Mother’s Friendship Day Gatherings after the Civil War. President Woodrow Wilson signs a Proclamation designating the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day.
May 21, 1932 – Amelia Earhart Putnam becomes the first woman to complete a solo-transatlantic flight by flying 2,026 miles
May 29, 1977 – Janet Guthrie becomes the first woman to qualify for and complete the Indy 500 car race
Music
The music prompt for this month is an image by John Paul Filo – Pulitzer Prize, 1971 – of an event at Kent State on May 4, 1970 that prompted Neil Young of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young to write, “Ohio.” Now go write or record up a storm about these folks, you, and/or the month of May!
I had written quite a bit, about Wonder Woman for the W post, but like some earlier entries, I held off on publication, and am glad I did. I still adore the concept of a wonder woman, not to be confused with a superwoman, but a concept I love even more is the concept of the Woke Woman. She is the real superhero. She is us. We are awakening. Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic(CC BY-NC 2.0)
You woke?
If you aren’t you probably say, “Huh?”
If you are, you probably are not white. Or that is what the Woke 100 suggests.
I know I am just an old white lady, who has no authority to speak about black culture… but I have a big mouth. And I am not sleeping.
Let me step back just a bit and define woke according to the urban dictionary.
“Although an incorrect tense of awake, a reference to how people should be aware in current affairs.”
Wikipedia further elaborates,
“woke is a political term of black origin that refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice.It is derived from the African American Vernacular English expression “stay woke,” whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.
I have said many times that there were moments when I felt like a switch flipped in my brain and I realized things about our world all in an instant. These were not mystical revelations. These were personal tipping points when I somewhat unconsciously decided I had enough evidence to understand a process or determine a pattern at play around me.
I swear I woke when I was about 11. 50 years ago. My brother was in Vietnam. He’d been wounded once in Hue and gone back into battle only to essentially be blown up a few months later. He survived. But it changed me forever. I saw at an early age that poor people went to war and rich people went to college. I saw that politicians ran the machinery that kept the war going. I did not know why they did this. But I became aware of political mistruths, of manipulation, and disinformation and the need for social justice.
I had similar awakenings a few other times in my life. Once, when I realized that my mother had suffered with a factitious disorder and set me up for medical abuse in order to fulfill her own needs, I realized in an instant that people had tried to convey this information to me for at least a decade, but that I could not hear it because I would not hear it.
Other people have had to deal with far worse.
It is not comfortable to see horror, some of the worst sorts of injustice,and know that it all might have been different if people shared what they knew or saw, if they had acted instead of turning aside and telling themselves they did not see what they saw, and saying nothing.
I personally believe that vast numbers of women are awakening. You can call it what you will but #BlackLivesMatter, #TimesUp and the #MeToo movement has had impact. No, it has not stopped the tragedies of essentially sanctioned murder, rape, exploitation, but information is getting out and more and more people are hearing. When change comes, it often happens quickly. Black women speaking up and taking control of their own voices, assaulted women, women who have lost loved ones, telling their truths and showing that no matter how perspective and time might have colored something, that the previous version of the truth could not be the truth and can no longer be supported at any level.
The release and success of Wonder Woman and Black Panther support the belief that old systems are breaking down and new information is being taken up and redistributed iconically in culture. Movies are both reflections and projections of culture and beautifully captures societal norms changes of which we might not even be aware at the time.
This week the media is awash with change stories. The Essence Woke 100 speaks to this. And today Bill Cosby was found guilty of drugging and sexual assault. This week it was also announced that a serial killer finally identified in Sacramento was a police officer. A museum that focuses on lynching opens. Justice is encroaching on the status quo. Straw men are burning.
I think many of us from all sorts of cultural groups and backgrounds are awakening or are woke. Being aware and noticing what is happening around us is the first step. Then we just have to stay awake and speak up.
Program cover for suffrage procession in Washington, D.C. March 3, 1913
We are celebrating Women’s History Month this year with images that inform and empower, and often, when you learn the backstory, piss you off. On social media we will be using the hashtag #WHM18 on our posts so you can follow along.
I personally adore this image from the program of the Suffrage Procession. It is so proud and positive. White, purple, and gold were what we would today call the pallet of the brand of women’s suffrage. The image movement is forward or to the right. The banners, regalia, and horse signify strength and determination.
You can find out more of the specifics of the Women’s Suffrage Procession, including the entirety of the procession pamphlet, at the Library of Congress (LOC). The LOC page about the Procession presents a good amount of information from before and after the event, including the assault on the march by men in town for the inauguration of Woodrow Wilson the next day. Hundreds were harmed, and in a vein similar to many current day protests and marches in the U.S., the police stood by and did little to protect the marchers and seemed to enjoy the actions and rudeness directed at the women. “One policeman explained that they should stay at home where they belonged.” Personal and group opinion with law enforcement determining which laws to enforce and interpreting the law for themselves has a long history. But the Chief of the Capitol Police lost his job, and in a backlash against the harassment and violence directed toward the women marchers the movement was re-energized and gained followers thanks to the press coverage of the attack.
This recording from 1958 certainly suggests that the “movement” did not end with the women’s vote and begin again only with the women’s movement of the 1960s and 1970s. The suffragettes are better referred to as suffragists. The struggle continues.
Women require information to govern in a democratic fashion just as do men. Understanding the evolution of a government, the systems from which it emerged, is essential to preservation, and betterment, of that government. Trajectories are real aspects of living systems and exert influence on contemporary processes.
From 18th century France, there were three estates of society:
the clergy (religious heads)
the nobility (rulers)
the commoners (everyone else who is not a slave)
Among the political commentators and thinkers, the media has been labelled as the fourth estate of modern day.
In modern democracy, the three pillars include:
the legislature (makes laws)
the executive (president or prime minister)
the judiciary (the courts)
The media has been labeled as the fourth estate of modern society.
The Fifth Estate, which has been labeled citizen journalism, has beeen broken down, I would argue incorrectly, into two types of journalism. The first being an extension of The Fourth Estate and the second as some sort of standalone pillar. In fact, to take the property analogies of estates and pillars of society one step further, I contend that information that can stand alone apart from a voice that speaks it, as is the case in a pamphlet, a book, or a digital transmission is the beam, brace, or buttress that makes pillars on estates into the cultural home in which we live.
Living systems, and we live within and are a part of a living system, are open systems.
I am not going to go any deeper into systems theory, self- organizing systems, or cybernetics, (but I would note, as an aside, that if you want to understand systems science through a woman’s eye, look at some Lynn Margulis quotes.)
Life requires change and the ability to bring in new elements and energy, as well as to delete, turn-off, or store-away other elements and processes, including tinformation paths and flow.
The transitions we are experiencing in the world are becoming more and more dramatic as we are living on the fulcrum of a tipping point where we cannot long balance; change will happen and the slightest actions, or inaction, by individuals can and will change the direction, the trajectory, of the path upon which we will find ourselves.
We do not know how this will all shake out. New technology brings new behavior. Gutenberg could not have known, nor could Martin Luther, that when Luther posted his 95 Theses, 500 years ago, that others would find his words so moving that they would use the new tech of the printing press to print and distribute hundreds, then thousands, of copies of Luther’s discussion points in what was literally the first viral post.
Women’s voices are strong, and the distributed nature of the digital web is quite feminine and whether we are using hashtags (#meto #timesup #shepersisted) or writing our own theses, we are engaged in public communication as people have been since the first humans gathered around an evening fire. Citizen journalism is a good thing if done with care. Most of us know which people we can rely on to give us good information. We know which bloggers, editorial writers, and cartooniswts we can trust to base their works, including opinion pieces, to be based in fact. How those facts are interwoven into “truths” are far more problematic. When we give our time and eyes to uncritically watching or reading “news” that is not reporting facts but into building viewers or followers, we are hurting ourselves and world that we communally build with our consumption and conversations.
We must, as women who are approaching 100 years of having the vote in the United States, become as responsible and careful with the information we create or share as we are with the food we give our children and families to build bodies. We are powerful and we hold the information that builds our children’s minds and our future knowledge used by our society in our hands.
Our mothers and grandmotherws figured out how to make cakes during the rationing of sugar during World War II.
We must figure out how to make our homes and businesses equally celebratory as we ration ourselves to verified information.
We must educate ourselves and navigate the current estates and pillars with a fervor that only mothers acting to preserve what they love can act.
This started out as my ME TOO story and it still is, part of it is anyway… the meta-story of a movement. The #metoo phenomena is not just about sexual assault or harassment. It is about speaking truth to power. Speaking truth, telling our stories, strengthens us. The voice in our heads becomes the voice in the streets. It has been almost one hundred years since women gained the right to vote in the United States by what had come down to one young man serving in a state’s legislature taking stock of what his mother had taught him and what she had asked of him. Roughly 150 years before women gained the right to vote, a woman asked her husband who was deeply involved in the drafting of documents that would create the first liberal democracy in the world to “remember the ladies.”
It appears to be time for more change. Ideas develop as time passes. Some call this social evolution. But it does not really matter what we call it. Change happens and it has trajectory and momentum. It cannot be stopped simply by individuals thinking it should stop. This is my take on part of what is transpiring in the U.S. today. We cannot know where this will lead, natural forces can be channeled but they cannot easily be stopped. I see patterns. Sometimes when I say this I feel like a character in a M. Night Shyamalan’s film, The Sixth Sense. These patterns are not, to the best of my knowledge, intrinsic patterns, like spirals and handedness, but simply patterns I perceive given my vantage in life. Photo by Ksenia Makagonova on Unsplash
The primary pattern I note and study is law “a virtually unbroken chain concerned with inheritance, trusts and foundations and other relevant matters leads back to Roman law” but law through a cultural not legal sense, law painted with a broader brush such as is found in the near universal moral code embodied in what we know as “The Golden Rule.” The trajectory I see follows the course of consolidated power from when the Council of Nicaea united Roman religious and military powers, until the Magna Carta limited the power of the King, which was followed in relatively short order by the Lutheran, Anabaptist, and Unitarian Reformations of Catholicism that limited the power of the Pope, and Constitution of the United States of America constrained the power of the State. Another shift in power is occurring. Our human nature has moved us to react to atrocities of slavery in the Civil War and genocide by the Nazis through WWII. We do not want another war, in fact, most of us want to end the use of war as a means of major dispute resolution and dominion. What I see emerging is a shift in kind. The inclusion of all people into the governance of our selves will change everything, when and if it progresses. The most massive way to change societies is not bit by bit, group, race, or ethnicity. The most massive way to impact all societies and move us along the path of culture change is to include women fully and equally into the governance of society, not just legal governance, but in all the ways our society regulates, manages, and governs itself. Let’s try this and see what happens.
Yes. I have high hopes for the Autumn.
There is a gathering in Detroit at the end of October.
I am of course thinking of Seneca Falls, but also of Julia Ward Howe’s words:
In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women, without limit of nationality, may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient, and at the earliest period consistent with its objects… Women’s Legacy Project Director, Nancy Hill, at Seneca Falls in 2014.
The Women’s suffrage movement made some poor judgments mid-Nineteenth Century and the along the way through the 20th Century. They addressed class but chose to exclude race from the scope of their concerns. After an inclusive beginning at Seneca Falls in 1848 which Frederick Douglass attended and at which he spoke, and at which abolitionists were well represented, something happened. That something was silence. White privilege is not a new concept. Inherent bias within the ruling class, whites, existed pre- and post- Civil War, and existed on both sides, not just the Confederate side. After the Civil War the North needed to walk the walk at home and in the southern lands and peoples that lost. They did not do this. It was more comfortable for white women to stick with white concerns and less painful for them to avoid the integrative issues, such as economic inequality.
We have started to own up to this history and must continue to do so. It benefits no one to engage in counting wrongs. Wrongs cannot be compared. I may have been raised in poverty and diminished by sexism, but I will not compare my personal history with anyone else’s. I will not pretend I can right the wrongs of the past either. I can acknowledge them. I can try to stop their perpetuation.
I know I am not alone. For almost 5 years a group of Tucson women writers have met once a month to discuss blogging and social media as it relates to business, personal writing, ethics, and legacy. The group is actively engaged in creating a better world. We are meeting the weekend of the Autumnal Equinox to have a retreat/conference. I know of at least a dozen other women’s groups in the area working to similar ends. Such groups and numbers, when combined, across the US and world, can and will change everything.
For 10 years prior to that I was a local, regional, and national level activist in a women’s peace and justice group.
The time is right.
The combining mechanism has been announced. The Women’s March has announced the Women’s Convention at the end of October of this year, 2017.
It is time for the aspirations of Seneca Falls to meet the full spectrum of American women in Detroit.
I will be there, will you?
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May 4, 1916 (2006) – Jane Jacobs, journalist, author, and urban studies activist, wrote The Death and Life of the Great American Cities in 1961. She opposed the “urban renewal” that demolished supposed urban blight and destroyed vibrant, urban, and chaotic communities.
Now go write or record up a storm about these folks, you, and/or the month of May!
I had written quite a bit, about Wonder Woman for the W post, but like some earlier entries, I held off on publication, and am glad I did. I still adore the concept of a wonder woman, not to be confused with a superwoman, but a concept I love even more is the concept of the Woke Woman. She is the real superhero. She is us. We are awakening.
