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Kavanaugh, Cosby, Weinstein – Counting on us to be Quiet
Today 81 year old Bill Cosby is waiting to learn his fate, facing up to 30 years behind bars for three counts of aggravated indecent assault against the woman whose allegations led to the criminal case against him. He continues to deny her allegations and those of the scores of women who came forward against him. Remorseless, he maintains to this day that the sexual contact was consensual. Of course he does. Meanwhile, Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court grows even more troubling, with new allegations of sexual misconduct that he vehemently denies. Of course he does. There are some Republicans defending him. It’s embarrassing to hear their dismissals…
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Make Some Noise, Murphy – We’re All Ears.
In December 1988, shortly after Candice Bergen showed up as Murphy Brown on American TV, I took up permanent residence in these United States. And for the next decade, I liked knowing I could find her if I needed her on a Thursday night at nine o’clock. Characterized as “Mike Wallace in a dress,” she was tough and didn’t suffer fools. She was, as the saying goes, “one of the boys,” a moniker that has been applied to me a time or two prompting me – then and now – to consider what it means to be a boy, a man. What constitutes “masculine” behavior, especially today when there are…
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Dolly Parton, Ireland, Jeannie C. Riley, Movies, Nell McCafferty, Northern Ireland, Sexism, The Troubles
Momma Still Sockin’ It – To Ireland & to the Harper Valley PTA
Yesterday President of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins signed into law the Thirty-Sixth Amendment of the Constitution Bill, repealing what have been some of the strictest abortion laws in the world. A historic moment for Ireland, this is also a moment to acknowledge how things have changed for women over the past 50 years – at work, at home, in the bedroom, and even in the pub. In the late 1960’s, I was a little girl concerned mostly with riding my bike and making daisy chains. I was often oblivious to The Troubles that dominated the news and even more so to the double-standards that affected the women in my life, most of…
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9/11, Anything can Happen, Billy Collins, Healing Field Tempe, Memoir, Remembering September 11th, Seamus Heaney, Terrorism, Themes of childhood
naming names – 9.11
Flanked by row upon row of flagpoles set five feet apart, we can stretch out our arms to touch two lives at a time, lest we forget what happened on September 11, 2001. The 9.11 memorial in Tempe, Arizona, is heartbreakingly beautiful, each one of its 2,996 flags signifying a life taken on that horrific autumn morning. We first visited the memorial in 2012. I remember watching as my daughter walked away from me, a somber and solitary figure cutting a new path deep into the Healing Field of red, white, and blue. I was undone by the sheer enormity of the memorial and her diminished stature in it. I had to force myself to look away to…
