Fighting for freedom

  

Continental Army’s North Carolina Brigade marching through Philadelphia on Aug. 25, 1777

This is a great drawing of the American Revolution, showing women and children in the wagon, taking their parts in the conflict.

This 250 year long experiment in democracy by a republic called the United States of America is not doing so well at this time.

Whether it shall long endure has become a question in many people's minds. In the months until the November election there are strange and awful possibilities to be thrown at the world from the current authoritarian clown.

We shall see...

Me visiting my second son and his family in Atlanta for the Fourth sometime in the  early 2000s. This year he and his family will be in Philadelphia at a World Cup Soccer game!

The frequent and well populated demonstrations show that many many Americans are opposed to the actions coming from the White House.

What is the United States of America? See Rebecca Solnit's article in The Guardian.

that article link is worth reading!

A voice - Maybe the Angry Women - 11

by Fine Art Photograph Mathilde Oscar, Le Cri

"Having the right to show up and speak are basic to survival, to dignity, and to liberty. I’m grateful that, after an early life of being silenced, sometimes violently, I grew up to have a voice, circumstances that will always bind me to the rights of the voiceless."

Your credibility arises in part from how your society perceives people like you, and we have seen over and over again that no matter how credible some women are by supposedly objective standards reinforced by evidence and witnesses and well-documented patterns, they will not be believed by people committed to protecting men and their privileges. The very definition of women under patriarchy is designed to justify inequality, including inequality of credibility.

To have a voice means not just the animal capacity to utter sounds but the ability to participate fully in the conversations that shape your society, your relations to others, and your own life. There are three key things that matter in having a voice: audibility, credibility, and consequence.

Audibility means that you can be heard, that you have not been pressed into silence or kept out of the arenas in which you can speak or write (or denied the education to do so—or, in the age of social media, harassed and threatened and driven off the platform, as so many have).

Credibility means that when you get into those arenas, people are willing to believe you, by which I don’t mean that women never lie, but that stories should be measured on their own terms and context, rather than patriarchy’s insistence that women are categorically unqualified to speak, emotional rather than rational, vindictive, incoherent, delusional, manipulative, unfit to be heeded—those things often shouted over a woman in the process of saying something challenging (though now death threats are used as a shortcut, and some of those threats are carried out, notably with women who leave their abusers, because silencing can be conversational or it can be premeditated murder).

To be a person of consequence is to matter. If you matter, you have rights, and your words serve those rights and give you the power to bear witness, make agreements, set boundaries. If you have consequence, your words possess the authority to determine what does and does not happen to you, the power that underlies the concept of consent as part of equality and self-determination.

Sexual assault can only thrive in situations of unequal audibility, credibility, and consequence. This, far more than any other disparity, is the precondition for epidemic gender violence.

Excerpts from Meditations in an Emergency by  Rebecca Solnit

My vase with four depictions of life as I see it. Here the demonstrations against the power-mongers.

"Americans are coming together over a shared fear. We know people living in fear. A higher percentage of people know the fear around what will happen to their children, their parents, their friends. We live in fear of being hurt while helping others. We live in fear of having more rights taken away. We live in fear of billionaires dictating our lives thinking they have our backs when what they do well is acquire money, sometimes ours, to do with what they will.

Those that feel powerless are watching the powerful. The powerful listen to each other. The tide will continue to turn as the powerless feel more disconnected and less in control of what their lives could be like.

The powerful won’t listen until they feel powerless.

Keith Kron

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Thanks to posts on the internet, which I'm re-sharing here!

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Lee Steadman from Minneapolis posted this on his FB page as of 2.13.26 at noon:

"ICE Activity continues to be high. Despite what Tim Walz, Tom Homan and National Media are reporting, the reality is that things on the ground in Minneapolis, Saint Paul, the surrounding suburbs and counties across Minnesota continue to see heavy ICE prescense, (sic.) abductions, staging at mobile homes, targeting schools, new tactics being implemented...

We are not in a drawback. Do not believe the headlines."

He gives an audio interview where he lists abductions and where ICE activities were happening as of Thursday.

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This last week:

Grand jury fails to indict Democratic lawmakers who urged service members to disobey any illegal orders from President Trump. https://cnn.it/4apwQ6u

Maybe the Angry Women - 7

 "It's traditional to make the phrase "peace on earth" part of your wishes or greetings at midwinter, but maybe these days we should be wishing for "peace with earth." Because the climate crisis is a war against nature, a one-sided war against the natural world that has already stolen places, species, lives, landscapes, patterns, glaciers, and stability itself from us, the grand us that is all life on earth."

By Rebecca Solnit in JAN 3, Five Facets of the Attack on Venezuela by the  Rogue Nation the US Has Become. Her newsletter is Meditations in an Emergency.

"san-francisco-ca-april-29-2018-rebecca-solnit-speaking-at-2018-bay-area-book-fest-at-a-panel-about-smart-and-modern-activism"

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Today's goddess: 

Tonantzin Guadalupe: Our Lady Who Searches.

The Lady of Guadalupe does not dwell within walls, but in the cracks. She does not remain upon altars; she moves instead along the edges of the world, where what is human fractures, where hope trembles like a candle on the verge of going out. She is the woman with gentle hands, deep eyes, and skin the color of the earth. She walks in search of her sons and daughters, especially those who are lost, those who have wandered into the ruins of violence, into the exile of pain.

Guadalupe is a searching mother. She does not wait seated—she walks. She crosses hidden graves, kisses ancient tears, gathers names that no one speaks anymore. Where the world abandons, she remains. Where contempt erases, she rewrites with dignity. She finds the remnants of spiritual ruin—shards of faith, fragments of identity, splinters and bones—and breathes new life into them. She restores their upright posture, their pulse, their right to exist without shame.

Our Lady, Tonantzin Guadalupe, is the secret weaving that unites lands beyond the oceans. The ancient thread that stitches together continents, memories, sorrows, languages, peoples, wounds. She touches desert sands and deep waters alike; she dwells in maize as well as in incense. She prays with the lips of a grandmother and cries out with the throat of a searching mother. She does not divide beliefs—she moves through them. She does not argue doctrines—she transcends them.

She lives in the hands that work the comal, in the clay transformed into vessels, in the healing plants, in awkward prayers, in broken songs, in the righteous anger that rises against injustice. She inhabits the humble kitchens where life is nourished, the hospitals where both life and death are kept vigil. She dwells in the grandmothers who pray the rosary as one counts the heartbeats of a lineage, so they will not be lost.

She is not confined within a temple: she is greater than any temple. No wall can contain her, no doctrine can possess her, no border can limit her. Guadalupe swims in the waters of human sorrow, flies over wounded territories, dances in the celebrations where the people resist, walks beside those who no longer have the strength to walk alone.

She is not only a promise of heaven: she is comfort made flesh on earth.

And when someone—broken, weary, lost—believes they have vanished forever, she appears—not always in dazzling form, sometimes in the form of another being, a gesture, a piece of bread, a single word—and she gathers the remnants and embraces them. And where there once seemed to be only dust, she sows again a name, a face, a destiny.

Guadalupe does not reign from above: she accompanies from below. She does not conquer—she rescues. That is why she remains alive. That is why she walks. That is why she searches. That is why she never stands still.

She is the womb that never grows weary of birthing the world anew.

Christian Ortíz.

Curanderismo Tradicional.

Artwork by Christian Faltis

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I have not forgotten those in The Ukraine nor other battlefields where innocent lives are targeted.

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On January 20, 2026, we’re walking out of work, school, and everywhere else – because a Free America begins the moment we stop cooperating with fascism.

When women and feminists pull our labor, our money, and our consent, we reveal the truth: we can shut this country down until we get the freedom and dignity we’re owed. That’s our leverage. That’s our power.

This date is one year since tRump took office for the second term and pardoned all the January 6 insurrectionists.

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May you embrace this day, not just as any old day, but as this day. Your day. Held in trust by you, in a singular place, called now.

Carrie Newcomer

The creative process - writing

 

Wow, May will have 5 Saturdays! And the first prompt is a typewriter, spectacles, and a lot of papers strewn about.

Mmm, my experience in writing has been mostly blogs of late, so I might talk about that. I admit to spending quite a lot of my time just reading the blogs posted by others. My shaky fingers has expanded to my hands, so even mousing around is getting very difficult - so I'm glad that I can still at least type. And I may not be doing much writing while on this antibiotic which seems to have made shakes worse - though I'm glad to have posted a few in advance.

But Sepia Saturday is looking for some old photos. Therefore, I'll see what kind of snapshots might exist related to writing.

Besides brains, one need sustenance to write. I sit here just having finished a bag (small) of potato chips and 3 cookies, while drinking a diet Dr. Pepper. But fresh donuts and 7-Up would have  also been good! I'd prefer not to eat brains. Just my personal choice. 

Archive Holdings-  Factory workers manually assemble typewriters. 1920s

Probably reenactors of author Mark Twain and his friend John  T. Lewis. Below is a version of these men as published by a historical society.

Journalist Nellie Bly, Ten Days in a Mad-House, 1887

I also have the hand-written letters from some ancestors from pre-Civil War times, with examples on that old post...

See other Sepia Saturday  posts !

Entertainment:

Reading Dan Brown's "Origin." Much the same feeling as his other books of being led along over long winding ways with peril due any moment, to maybe something in the last chapter. But it's so fun to imagine Tom Hanks playing the role of the hero, I am halfway through and enjoying this Spanish and religious-questioning book (as an audio version.)

I also would recommend the movie "Frida" which I recently watched on Prime. It shows much of her art, as well as her husband's (Diego Rivera). There is an artistic twist in the film whereby different works are connected to the quotes by the artist by animations. It also has English subtitle translations of the Spanish words. However it doesn't include the two houses she and Diego lived in for years, nor the beautiful death scenes I've seen in other Frida Kahlo movies about her life.

And among my new newsletters I read are Rebecca Solnit's "Meditations in an Emergency." The recent one was an article about an activist elder, "... Jo Anne Garrett of Baker, NV, who would've turned 100 on April 30th."  The title of the article is The Art of Arrival, and it includes some wonderful thoughts about journeys.

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Sunday update from Starhawk about the boat carrying food to Gaza which was bombed by an Israeli drone:  

Here’s a short update on the Conscience, the Freedom Flotilla boat attempting to bring humanitarian aid to Gaza. The boat was bombed two nights ago by drones sent by the Israeli military, and severely disabled. Fortunately, the thirty humanitarian activists on board are safe for the moment, and the ship has not sunk. But the Maltese government is not allowing the ship into harbor, where it would be safe from further attacks and could be repaired. Please contact the Maltese Government and urge that they allow the Conscience safe passage and shelter.

Maltese Consulate in New York:

(closed until Monday, no message option)

(+1) (212) 725 2345

Email:

malta-un.newyork@gov.mt

Maltese Prime Minister’s Office

Maltese prime minister's office +35622002400

For the moment, the activists on board the Conscience are unharmed. But the people of Gaza are being harmed, with no aid or food allowed in...

You may contact Malta government to urge them to let the boat into port for repairs.

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Today's quote:

Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the earth revolves.

Thich Nhat Hanh

Small jar by Barbara Rogers - another use of overlapping three glazes
 

Blue Ridge Apartments

 The sign at the entrance to the apartments. It's not totally accurate, as the office is now open until 4 pm.

A lovely little begonia plant, dropping it's old flowers onto the ground. That's why I stopped raising any begonias indoors...too messy.

Today's quote:

When all the ordinary divides and patterns are shattered, people step up to become their brothers’ keepers. And that purposefulness and connectedness bring joy even amidst death, chaos, fear, and loss.  - REBECCA SOLNIT

It's Saturday again - 3 stories of Alaska

Don't the days run together when I'm not interacting with any scheduled types of activities.

The Sunday church is available on YouTube, and I can catch the whole thing whenever I want rather than getting up and dressing special (it used to be in Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes.)

Well there is one weekly thing that I try to work on earlier than Saturday itself...to publish on Sepia Saturday.

Let's see if I have any old photos that are somewhat linked to this photo. Navy nurses sitting on a rather old jeep, with some strange sign on the building behind them. Does it refer to the base name? I don't even know when this was taken...but it does say Alaska. Mmm. That immediately made me think of something close to my own life. No, I've never been there. But I know people who have!

My friend from 7th grade...

My long time friend, whose father was stationed in Alaska during WW II. He died there, probably in one of the fierce battles against the Japanese in 1942-43. These attacks on American soil were after Pearl Harbor in December 1941 but didn't get as much publicity. I don't know much about it, but there're some details available through Wikipedia...HERE.

And here are some sepia photos of Alaska.

US Troops in Alaska in 1942-43

Japanese attack on Dutch Harbor, Alaska.

Another story...another friend from 7th grade...

This dear friend got this shirt and thought it was so funny, back in about 2014 or so. Now Corona beer isn't exactly anyone's favorite to order any more...though it still tastes the same, especially in a bottle with a lime stuck in the neck, but it's just got a bad connotation these days.

I had been a bridesmaid in my friend's (pictured above) wedding in 1961 or so. Then she and her husband went to live in Alaska, where she had both her sons. They spent a while there, in a cabin type rough life, and she remembered it fondly. Yes I did have a couple of photos of her smiling with the children, but couldn't locate them, and they don't really show the wilds of Alaska.

We both enjoyed the TV show "Northern Exposure." She said she had been in the bar that was featured in many episodes, but it was in Washington state, not really Alaska.

AND...my third dear friend and father of 2 of my sons...

I haven't found any photos of my ex husband, who was on isolated duty in Alaska for the US Coast Guard on an Aleutian island, where no women were, nor anything but birds and fish, and supplies were flown in when the weather would allow. It was a LORAN station, watching out for the very close Rusians, after all, it was 1962!

I wrote to him for about a year. I was in Illinois for some of that time, where I'd met him, and then I was as stewardess in Miami FL when he returned and visited me, and well, we fell into love and marriage.

no longer in operation - USCG Cape Sarichef Loran Station on Unimak Island

Today's Quote:

When all the ordinary divides and patterns are shattered, people step up to become their brothers’ keepers. And that purposefulness and connectedness bring joy even amidst death, chaos, fear, and loss.

REBECCA SOLNIT