Category: WOMEN

Introducing Tuesday Tours: Random Worthy Blog Posts

Tourist with suitcases
Welcome to Tuesday Tours.  There's so much good stuff out in the Blog Universe; we all have our blog readers filled with those we love.  It's tough to keep up though, so until further notice, I'll be offering Tuesday tours of some of my own frequent favorites.

One of my favorite bloggers, Pundit Mom, offers posts at two ends of the spectrum as the week begins.  Both are worth reading.  The first:  advice to the Obamas about the neighborhood around Sidwell Friends School.  It's just fun.  The second is a serious post with a serious question:  When is it right to tell an airline official that a passenger is making you nervous
? 

Concerned about what's going on in Israel?  Check back daily at Writes Like She Talks, where Jill Zimon has her finger on what's up all over the Web.  Here's a sample.

The wise Maria Niles is looking to figure out all those generation labels like X and Boomer and Millennial — and what they mean (and what the heck her own is.)

Also "generationally speaking," you know that all last year I wrote comparing 1968 and 2008.  Well,  Time Goes By columnist Saul Friedman has done me one (actually two) better, writing of lessons from his own iconic president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Obama's point of reference, Abraham Lincoln. 

Beth Kanter is a legend.  Rightfully so.  So when she offers 52 ways for Non-profits to use social media efficiently as a New Year's gift to her readers, I'm figuring that at least some of them can help the rest of us too.

Two of my favorite moms have something special too:  I'm late on this one, but Her Bad Mother's description of a willful three-year-old (it's long so wait until you have time) is priceless.  Some kids are just strong strong little people.

Also, Woulda Coulda Shoulda's Mir Kamin celebrated her son's last single-digit birthday with a wonderful hymn to a newly-nine-year-old.  She never misses, that one.

Finally, this one – because the happy family in the photo is mine.

Doubt – More than a Movie — Also a Time Capsule


This film, Doubt, is exceptional. Smart, funny, moving, intricate and remarkably well-acted, it is, without exception, a remarkable accomplishment. I grew up in Pittsburgh and nuns like Meryl Streep’s Sister Aloysius Beauvier were a staple in my life, not in Catholic school, but every weekend, at speech tournaments at Greensburg Catholic or Central Catholic or other parochial schools that so often hosted the competitions. 

God help you if one of your judges was one of these sisters.  They were the toughest and the scariest.  Even in the cafeteria between Round 2 and Round 3, they wandered with the same “eyes in the backs of their heads” that Sister Aloysius demonstrates to her young protege.  The teams they coached were the amazing.  Practiced, smart, disciplined and resourceful, they did the sisters proud. 

As I watched Meryl Streep as the principal of a Catholic elementary school where accusation and suspicion take over, all the memories of those scary Saturday mornings at the front of a classroom, giving speeches on labor unions or disarmament or the dangers of the Soviet Union came tumbling back. The nerves were unavoidable; when the sisters were among your judges, you had to be prepared, organized, well-spoken and committed.  Or else.

Probably the familiarity of those nuns (weird for a nice Jewish girl to have access to, I suppose) and the memory of all the Sundays I went to Mass with friends after a sleep-over added to the film’s impact.  I know I had a very personal reaction.  But whether you grew up in Idaho, Arizona or the Bronx, the film is irresistible and won’t leave you alone just because it’s not on the screen any longer.  I’m not going to talk about the plot because that will diminish the pleasure of watching it unfold, but if you respect great writing, great acting and excellence in film-making, you don’t want to miss this one.

Farewell to A True Anti-Apartheid (and Jewish) Hero(ine) of South Africa: Helen Suzman

Helen Suzman3
Nobody ate lobster tail at our house, or bought anything else that came from South Africa, even way back in the 50’s, .  Well before Randall Robinson’s TransAfrica or Steve Van Zandt’s Sun City (see below**), my mother was actively boycotting the apartheid regime.  Despite her generally moderate liberal perspective, she was fierce about this and created my own boycott habit, something that drove my kids crazy all the years that they drank Ovaltine while their friends got Nestle Quick. (That’s another story though.)

Of course anyone back then who knew about South Africa or read Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country understood the horror of it, but barely anyone talked about it, or demanded action from their own countries.  So why was this the issue that set fire to my mom?  

Helen Suzman*, who died on New Year’s Day at the age of 91, was the reason.  For years she stood as the only anti-apartheid voice in the entire South African Parliament – for six of those years as the only woman as well.The Jewish wife of a well-to-do physician, she entered politics, visited Mandela in prison, stood and spoke, often alone, for the end of apartheid and all that it stood for.  Because she was brave, and because, like so many early white activists there, she was Jewish, her often solitary and always dangerous crusade was a matter of particular pride to many Jewish women, my mother among them.  Her powerful example was a foreshadowing of much that came later.  By the time I was in college, friends were lying in at the doors of Chemical Bank to demand divestiture – removal of American funds from South African investments.  By the 80’s daily demonstrations, and arrests, outside the DC South African embassy kept a drumbeat of attention on the issue.   It took until February of 1990 for Mandela to be released from prison, granting great credit to Ms. Suzman, who later stood at his side as he signed the new constitution.

How interesting that one of the earliest moral political lessons I learned came from the courage of a woman half way around the world, not only because of her courage and effectiveness but also because of her faith.  We speak so casually of “role models” these days, but when there is a true model of how to live, the impact is enormous.  I’ve known that for a long time, and as I watched Barack Obama tell city kids he visited on Thanksgiving eve that ” You guys might end being the president some day” I thought it again.

Ms. Suzman’s example multiplied her power: not only did she stand alone for change when such a stand was desperately needed, she also taught all those who watched her that they could stand too, that just as her stands gave birth to theirs, their own actions multiplied the impact of hers.  As we enter this new year, with so much ahead of us, it’s something we would do well to remember – and live by.
*Here’s an interview with Ms. Suzman

**Here’s the 1985 video from “Miami Steve” and artists from Herbie Hancock to Pat Benetar and Bonnie Raitt to Lou Reed and The Boss himself.

Please Read This: It Will Make You Thankful for This Woman

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That's Kelly, known to you as Mocha Momma.  Hence the photo.  She is an extraordinary blogger and story teller, daughter, parent and friend.  She also is a learning disabilities expert and "literacy coach" and now an assistant principal, and this week she posted something that reminded me again of how critical her work is and how well she does it.  Take a minute for a brief inkling of what it's like to work in an "underserved" school – and at the difference one exceptional woman can make.  You'll be proud.

Obama’s Economic Team, Yeah They’re Good But I’m Excited about Melody!

Melody Barnes I started writing about this as the announcement was made and got called away.  Now I discover that my friend and very wise colleague PunditMom has basically said everything I would have said – so go read her evaluation. 

I still want, though, to share my sense of this remarkable woman.  It's very exciting.  Melody Barnes, now a top adviser to President-Elect Obama, is one of the most impressive, decent and unpretentious people I've worked with in Washington or anywhere else.  She's smart, she's interesting, always open, funny and committed.  She is a wonderful choice.  Since she's been working with the transition for some time it's no surprise, but it still says a lot that she's there.  Here's a interview with her that will give you an idea of her thinking and of the way she responds; calm, orderly, thoughtful and usually, wise.


Not much detail, I know. My own experiences with her were peripheral and intermittent but this I know:  her presence in the Administration is yet another piece of evidence supporting what I wrote yesterday.  The values, outlook and core of this Administration offer more and more hope that they're bringing smart, capable and "no drama*" people with them as they take over in these very difficult times.

*Yeah, yeah I know but Larry Summers is just one guy.

KEEPING OUR EYES ON THE PRIZE: HEALTH CARE, EDUCATION AND ECONOMIC SECURITY: THIS IS A LIFE OR DEATH ELECTION

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It’s fun to write about politics; this blog has always been about many things but has pretty much been all politics all the time for the past three months.  Even so, once in a while all that handicapping and general outrage and idealism and hope crashes smack into the basic realities of what’s at stake here. 

For example, just this month:

  • I had a medical test which costs money, (and which not all insurance companies cover,) that found and dealt with something that was not important today but, if not detected, could someday have been way more important than I even want to think about.
  • A friend I really admire was diagnosed with Lupus – costly and complicated to treat.
  • Another friend’s child was born a month premature, miles away from home during a vacation.  After some very scary post-delivery bleeding, she and her baby are fine now.  Their health insurance guaranteed easy access to capable, coordinated care.
  • A story appeared, in various forms in several papers, reporting "Many Cancer Patients Forgo Health Care Due to Soaring Cost of Medication" and including these other facts:

"25 percent of families with a cancer patient spent their lifetime savings for the treatment.  The same survey said 10% of these families had to forego some basic needs like food, heat and housing" and

"20% of Americans have big problems paying their medical bills."

  • Another, in newspapers and Scientific American, reported that "the United States has slipped from 24th to 29th in infant mortality rates in developed countries," meaning that 28 "first world" countries are doing better than we are in keeping newborn infants alive.

This is the reality in our country today.  And that’s just one issue in just one month. The same is true for education, climate change and our basic civil rights.  And that doesn’t count Iraq, Guantanamo, candidates who want to ban books, threatened legal access to contraception and other women’s rights issues, the growing income gap and the current terrifying economic crises.

I know you know this.  As my rabbi likes to say, "I’m talking to myself here" but as we monitor polls and the endless talk show and newscast chatter, we need to remember.  As I was awakened by a very lovely nurse offering me cranberry juice, with a view of colorful fall leaves on the trees outside the window of a clean, well-lit recovery room, the first thing that came into my mind was how lucky I was to be there.  This election is about winners and losers and parties in control, yes.  But even more, this time, it’s life and death.

Oh, and if you want to get upset about the campaign itself anyway, try this.