My friend Julie Greenwood,
who has had a radio show on WVKR
91.3 FM radio in Poughkeepsie, New York called Fancy
Brocoli http://www.fancybroccoli.org
Social Justice Radio: Prison Talk and Jazz, three hours of discussion on prison
reform issues which includes a shout out from and to people in
Green Haven Correctional Facility, Fishkill, Mid-Orange, Wallkill,
Shawangunk, Otisville and other prisons in the range of WVKR,
has started a new radio program Be the
Change with her other producers Amy and Shoko. I was
featured on the Wednesday, June 25, 2008 program. Go to http://www.bethechangeradio.org
and click on the archives link to listen.
I decided to take my own advice and
go to college. In May I finished my PhD. in Creative
Writing from Binghamton University. I have been awarded a Fulbright
to Paraguay for 2008-9. Ain't life grand!
Last year when I saw the market dropping I took the funds of
the Katherine Arnoldi Scholarship Fund for Teenage Mothers
out of the mutual funds at the socially conscious Calvert
Foundation Giving Fund, which holds the trust and put the funds
into safe CD's there. Here is the problem: the Katherine Arnoldi
Scholarship Fund has been able to give a scholarship from the
interest on the principle up until this year. Now it has not
made enough to do so. So, if you are interested please see the
scholarship page here to learn
how you can donate money so we can offer a scholarship this year.
Thanks so much for anything you can do.
Et tu, Brutus?
Okay, I can't help it. I hate that women who are in the patriarchy
and think they are forced for their survival to look like expensive
property wear fur. Diamonds, gold and fur. Disgusting!
It makes me sick, but then I must be radical because I think
anyone who keeps another sentient being, such as an animal for
thier own entertainment is very much buying into what will soon
be an old model. In a little while, I hope, people will find
it horrorifying that people had pets at all. The arrogance! Okay,
I know you will tell me that people have had pets forever, but
....that don't make it right.
What upsets me today specifically is that PETA has
an ad that equates teen moms with dogs.Okay, I know it's
funny, I guess, but the assumption is that not getting
"your" animal spaded is like encouraging teen pregnancy
and "unwanted babies." Of course the assumption is
that teen moms have unwanted babies. Tell that to the child that
I had as a teenager, please. Come here, you *#! *#! makers of
this ad (all males, by the way), and speak to her in person.
And then, how's about you and me stepping outside!*
As if teen moms did not have enough persecution. Any comments?
Please email me at info@collegemommagazine.com
*I'm a pacifist. I mean step outside and talk. Honest! I favor
the technical rather than the juridical model (see Foucault).
College Mom Magazine
is featured in an article, "Student Moms, Pushed Off
Campus," in the October 2007 issue of Glamour magazine.
If you like to see articles like this in Glamour, then write
them at letters@glamour.com
or Glamour, 4 Times Square, New York, NY 10036-6593
or fax them at 212 286 6922. Thanks!!
I spent the weekend in Toronto at the Association for Mothering's
Annual Conference. I spoke at two panels on equal rights
to education for moms, especially teenage moms. I cannot count
the times I heard the word "empower" used by people,
mostly "service providers" who are "helping"
teen moms, completely without question.
I said, "Oh, okay. First society is going to deny teen
moms equal rights, then you, employed by the government in the
guises of a nonprofit, are going to 'empower' them by giving
them some time in a shelter to be safe, or food or baby strollers
or a weekend off." Frustrating. Actually, what I really
said was that these "programs" are stopgap, funded
programs (after all, the people doing the "empowering"
are making money off the teen moms) that treat the symptoms not
the underlying cause which is the denial of equal rights.
Many of the presenters were people who want to "help"
but are not critically thinking about the issues, and I am sure
they are full of the best intentions. They apparently have not
stopped to see themselves from the teen mom 's point of view.
The actual organizers, Andrea O'Reilly and Renee
Knapp, who wrote the Mother Outlaws book (a must read for
all in the field, most especially because it uses Adrienne
Rich's Of Woman Born as the primary text) the founders and
Directors are, of course, knowlegable and deeply thinking and
conversing on the subject of mothers, and have founded this organization
ten years ago. They included in the final address Barbara
Hall, chief Commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission,
who spoke about how mother's rights are denied illegally, but
she brushed over education, not mentioning it except in passing.
I met the excellent and right on Editor in Chief of Yo MaMa,
Amanda Cain, who said after Barbara spoke, "I didn't
know my rights were being violated," and told of her story
of trying to find a apartment in Toroto as a teen mom. Some of
the work I do in the U.S. is not applicable to Canada, because
apparently, no one gets financial aid to go to college in Canada
and everyone has to take out school loans. So, it is even more
difficult for teenage moms in Canada.
An excellent paper, "The Perception of Class and Consumerism
in Teen Mothers" using bell hooks's work at the conference
by Gwen Rusmisel from Beloit College about how
teen mothers, internalizing negative messages, try to separate
themselves from "poor mothers," by a hyper materialism,
trying to separate themselves from the image of the welfare dependent
mom by shopping, often running up debt. She suggested for teen
moms to resist the negativity, and remain dependent as long as
possible to secure a good foundation of education and support
before moving into independence.
Wow. She was singing my song. My family wanted nothing to
do with me when I became a single mom and I obliged them by disappearing
and trying to become independent, being a sitting duck for various
bad luck situations, expoitation and abuse.
Even though I rarely speak about the dads, I came across an
article in the June 16, 2007 issue of Time: "In the
U.S., more than half of divorced fathers lose contact with their
kids within a few years. By the end of 10 years, as many as two-thirds
of them have drifted out of their children's lives. According
to a 1994 study by the Children's Defense Fund, men are
more likely to default on a child-support paymet (49%) then a
used car payment (3%)."
My book of short stories, All Things Are Labor, hopefully
will be released in August. I will be reading at Bluestockings
Bookstore, 172 Allen Street, New York City on September 12, 2007
at 7:00.
I have never liked fireworks. Could never understand the fascination,
to, what seems to me, the adoration of bombs bursting in air.
Peter Young, my good friend from Bisbee, Arizona,
has a show of magnificent paintings at PS1, the contemporary
art branch of the Museum of Modern Art which opened June 24,
2007 and will be up throughout the summer on the second floor
main gallery. The show is inspiring, not only because the paintings
are so spiritually uplifting, but because of the faith that Peter
has had all these years in his paintings and in his simple life.
He moved to New York in the early Sixties to make a life of art.
He showed for many years with Castelli, gracing the cover of
Artforum, and was also represented by Dick Belamy at the Green
Door Gallery. Then he moved out to Bisbee, Arizona in the Seventies
for a simple life of placing water in the desert for the Sanctuary
movement, painting his huge paintings and supporting local artists,
such as Chico McMurty, now in Red Hook, New York. He has a show
of Mexican Music on KBRP radio on Thursdays at 9. You can catch
it on streaming radio: http://www.KBRPRadio.com
On May 11, I spoke to classes, mostly teen moms at Binghamton
BOCES, about their equal rights to education, about the
amounts of financial aid they are eliglible for and about their
rights to be on college campuses.
The week of June 13-17 I was again at the Clearwater Festival
in Croton on Hudson, New York, Pete Seager's fundraiser for his
and Clearwater's efforts to clean up the Hudson. I am on the
signpainting crew, on site crew and camp out the week before
the festival opens.
Summer issue of the College Mom Magazine is glorious. Check
out Rita Naranjo, San Diego mom of two in a graduate program
at UC San Diego, or the news of a new sorority for single moms,
or the story of Rebecca Trotsky-Sirr's Letter to Herself on Graduation
from Medical school. http://www.collegemommagazine.com
Last Monday I made my second trip to Easton, Pennsylvania where
I spoke to the moms at the Third Street Alliance, a homeless
shelter, about their equal rights to education. Not one
mom knew about the fact that they are eligible for $4,050 Pell
Grant, $4,000 SEOG, $4,000 in state grant money and up to $4,000
a year in Work Study money. One mother had attended some college
that had her sign papers that she did not understand, but that
turned out to be loan papers. Now she has thousands of dollars
in debt and no education. Deborah Byrd, who teaches in
the Women's Studies and the English Department teaches a community
outreach class at Lafayette college in which the students meet
every Monday night at the homeless shelter and host programs,
including my visit.
The Magazine for College Moms, paying tribute to moms
in college, is finally up on the web at http://www.collegemommagazine.com
Another movie to see: Our Daily Bread, 2005, director Nikolaus
Geyrhalter (Germany/Austria), is a film about food production
that has no words, just the ambient sounds of machines. Fish
are harvested through a tube, then fall onto a conveyer belt
where they are gutted and cleaned. Green peppers are grown out
of styrofoam squares inside a bubble of controlled environment,
and one lone man and a tractor harvest an entire world, it seems.
Beautifully composed. Frightening.
Next Saturday, April 14 is a Day of Action, stepitup2007.org
according to an email from Bill McGibbon, author recently
of Enough, an interesting must read about our medical
futures.
A great documentary, NO, by Aishas Shahidah Simmons
about rape and sexual violence in the African American communities.
Beautiful and very empowering for those of us who have been sexually
assaulted or battered, which she says includes one in three women.
Seems low to me. More information about the film or to order
call 1 800 343 5540. Aishas has a website: http://www.myspace.com/afrolez
I am fiercely pro-choice. I am an advocate for equal access
to education for teen moms and recently someone asked me what
I thought of Feminists for Life, a horrible co-opting by people
who in no way are feminists and who do nothing to help teen moms
besides torment them. What upset me about the question is that
someone thought because I fight for equal access to education
for teen moms that I might be against abortion. I have always
been insulted by this connection. Of course I am pro-choice,
for equal access to all medical care, especially reproductive
medical care, as a right that must not be denied! Just like access
to high school and college!!!!
All Things Are Labor, my collection of short
stories, (release date: August 2007) is now available for advance
purchase at Amazon.
Yesterday, on Dr. Martin Luther King Day, one of my favorite
holidays (one of great inspiration, recollection, study, meditation
and renewal) I was pulled over by the police, who proceeded to
shout at me, "Do not get out of the car, do not get out
of the car." It felt like they had guns drawn as they stood
away from the car, shouting directions to me. I thought this
is so fitting. This is so good for me to remember what it is
like to have no safety of person, to know that at any moment
my life, my body or my mind can be tormented, held hostage and
tortured. I have never had an accident, or even gotten a parking
ticket and, when they asked me why I had been pulled over, I
had no idea. I still think it was a case of road rage on the
part of the officer, but nonetheless I was grateful for the reminder
of the fear that so many people of the world live with every
day.
The day before at the Lakeview Mennonite Church in northeastern
Pennsylvania where I now attend, I read on what would have been
Tillie Olsen's 95th birthday, excerpts from "I Stand
Here Ironing." Oh, there was never a more perfect story,
so rich, so deep, so wide, so vast. Here is what I wrote to Tillie
Olsen's family at the end of the day:
Today at the Lakeview Mennonite Church
in northeastern Pennsylvania, I read from I Stand Here Ironing.
Some of the congregation of dairy farmers, teachers, social workers,
and simple folk, many with prayer caps and bowed heads had not
heard of Tillie Olsen and all after, so moved, asked me to make
copies of the story for them to read closer. I told the story
that Tillie had told me of sending her story in to the contest
at Stanford: she was a hotel housekeeper, and, cleaning a room,
she noticed an advertisement in a thrown away newspaper that
said "Short Story Contest" so, she sent in "I
Stand Here Ironing" and, when Wallace Stegner called to
tell her that she had won and he would be looking forward to
seeing her there at the Graduate Program in Creative Writing
at Stanford in the fall, she replied, "Is it okay that I
didn't finish the Tenth Grade?" Since I always cry when
I read the story, even when I am all alone, and usually in very
different places than the last time I read it, I was determined
that I would not cry this time, and I did very well, that is,
until the last few words. Ironically the sermon had been about
our gifts, how we each have our gifts, our different gifts,
to give in service to others. We had sung "Morning Has Broken,"
and "There Are Many Gifts" from 1 Corinthians 12:1-11.
So, when read "I Stand Here Ironing," about so many,
many things, but now reading in light of "our gifts,"
and I read "So all that is in her will not bloom-but in
how many does it? There is still enough left to live by. Only
help her to know- help make it so there is cause for her to know-that
she is more than this dress on the ironing board, helpless before
the iron," I could not help but feel the complexity of finding
our gifts, of offering our gifts, of having that priveledge,
that opportunity, or, more precisely, of the journey, the trial
and error of it, the meandering, experimenting, the often, it
seems, impossibility, that we all must take to first find and
then offer up our gifts, which may not seem so at the time, and,
I thought of Tillie Olsen's great journey, and faith on that
journey and her offering, shining out, at that moment to the
eager open faces of the congregation, the beauty of those words
which must have, had to have come so pure all in one piece, the
perfectness of each word, the utter difference in that writing,
so new and never done before, and I thought, there, there is
a gift.
For all of us that work for equal
rights for mothers, Tillie Olsen is our mentor
and inspiration and we all mourn her loss on January 1, 2007.
She was 94. In tribute I will re-read a story I have memorized,
"I Stand Here Ironing," (Tell Me a Riddle) the
greatest story ever of mothering. It tells the deep flowing truth
of what it is to be a mother in poverty, as most are. The last
time I saw Tillie was here in New York along with her daughter,
Julie. Someone was making a documentary of her and she wanted
me to be in it and so we met at a restuarant where Tillie and
I spoke while the woman filmed. Tillie has always been encouraging
to me, first writing a blurb for my book, and then encouraging
me and meeting with me each time she came to New York. The first
time I met her in person she had invited me to her hotel room
and when I crossed into the hotel lobby, I burst into tears:
I could hardly believe that I was about to meet the person who
I had reverered and respected and who had been a guiding light
to me in my darkest hours. The hotel guard came over to me, I
assume thinking I was a person who needed to be escorted out,
and I could not stop crying to explain. I finally wrote on a
piece of paper that I was to meet Tillie Olsen in such and such
room and would do so as soon as I could contain myself. By the
time I made it up to the room, my face was bloated, my eyes red
and I could not stop the tears from coming again. Another writer
was there and she laughed and said, "Oh, yes, I cried the
first time I met Tillie Olsen, too."
She wrote in my copy of Tell Me a Riddle:
"The book (The Amazing True
Story of a Teenage Single Mom) ought to be in every
high school; and colleges-and you should be on tour from time
to time-- Gide's sentence- prefacing one of his books. (I quote
it in the 1st pages of Silences)
'I intend to give you courage, joy, perspicacity, knowledge,
defiance' is what you acieved.
Love- Tillie April 4, 2000."
And that was Tillie, someone who continously gave me courage,
joy, perspicacity, knowledge, defiance and I am renewed today
and more than ever re-dedicated. I only hope I can be worthy.
The old powers that have so shamed and disgraced us and diverted
us from our true work are on their way out. Will we be ready?
It is a new year, after all.
Must see movie: Darwin's Nightmare by Hubert Sauper (2004) about World Bank financed Nile perch
fishing around Lake Victoria in Tanzania: 250 tons of fish leave
in planes daily and the people are left starving.
Has anyone mentioned that the
same people who voted so gleefully for war just two years
ago could be the same that have voted now democratic?
That makes me think that this is not an anti war vote at all.
I think it was Karina that changed their mind. They saw
people fleeing from the water on foot and being met by armed
National Guards who forced them on buses and put them in camps.
I think that is what scared them to vote, seeing the connection
between the war in Iraq and what might happen to THEM. I think
they were perfectly happy thinking that the military was taking
the heat for them in Iraq, being nice targets and decoys so that
the US will not be hit, but then realized that it might have
ramifications for them, not only because it may be their son,
cousin, daughter that will take the hit, but also because they
could be in a disaster, too, and walking out on foot. Just a
question. We will see exactly what way the cat jumps. I can't
get in their heads. In the meantime the rest of the world thinks
we have come to our senses. Is it too much to hope for?
I am willing to die for peace but there is no cause for which
I am willing to kill"--Gandhi "Thou shalt not kill"
--Ten commandments
Another scary development is what the Christian right (TV and
radio) is saying. I think much more research needs to be done
in analyzing what these media outlets are saying that is encouraging
the Christian right to hate others and support killing, war mongering
and vicious calls for blood in some sort of a message about protecting
the holy land. I think we need to look at their arguments, the
spurious claims and erroneous premises and then answer them with
logical proof. They are talking usually to people most susceptible
to fallacies in logic, those whose own harsh lives have precluded
the advantages of education.
Feministing.com
,a great feminist
website, has an interview with me today. And, of course, someone
took issue with what was a stupid comment on my part, one I was
making to make a point. I'm not perfect. I try my best. I said,
wouldn't it be great if some of the money used for football stadiums
could go to housing on college campuses for single moms? The
guy who responded said that football fields are paid for by donations
mostly with 40% public funds. Why was I attacking men's sports,
he wanted to know and so on and on. Wow! Did you know your tax
dollars are supporting 40% of those huge stadiums so young boys
can bash each other? Okay, I know it's a sport. I really have
no objection to what anyone does. It's a free country. If people
want to spend their money, millions and millions of dollars,
on this, great. I was just hoping that some people might care
about struggling poor women and children. Silly me.
Later the same guy wrote upset that I said I was "entitled"
to financial aid. Luckily someone responded with the truth: that
every citizen that qualifies is eligible for financial aid in
the United States. Then he got upset that high schools have day
care.
Anyway. Made me want to hang it up. I saw that a religious
retreat needs a housekeeping person. Sound awful good for me.
At least I would be paid for my work and I can seek penance for
all my sins, which are many, at the same time. It's a hard life,
a hard life, a very hard life. It's a hard life wherever you
look.
Oh, well, I put my money where my mouth is. Check out the
scholarship page.
A sad day: Hilda Terry (1914-2006)passed away October
13, great pioneer woman cartoonist, creator of Teena which ran
from 1941-1966, first woman admitted to exclusive all men's cartoonist
league, National Cartoonist Society. Thanks to the great work
of Trina Robbins, she certainly knew that we younger women
cartoonists knew about her and loved and admired her. I last
saw her at the opening of the She Draws Comics: 100 Years
of Women Cartoonists curated by Trina at the Museum of Comic
and Cartoon Art in New York City, and Hilda Terry was surrounded
by admirers, young women cartoonists, autograph seekers, photographers
and interviewers and seemed to be having the time of her life.
The Motherhood Manifesto:What America's Moms Want- And
What to Do About It by Joan Blades and Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner
(Nation, 2006) includes such dismal statistics such as that mothers
are "44% less likely to be hired than non-mothers for the
same job.....and non-mothers were offered an average of $11,000
more than mothers for that same high-salaried job." (184)
Says what I have been saying since 1976, but I love to see the
young people carrying on. Great book. Check it out!
Heads up to Andrew D. Arnold for correcting some past
failures of his by writing about women graphic novelists in October
9, 2006 Time magazine.
I think Nellie McKay is going to
finally release her next album, Pretty Little Head,
at the end of October on her own label, Hungry Mouse. Check it
out! Go to my links page for a link to her website.
Write your congress representative to support debt cancellation
bill for Haiti and other debt ridden countries. Here is the
info:
1.) HR 1130 provides for the cancellation of debts owed
to international financial institutions by poor countries.
This bill is sponsored by Rep. Maxine Waters of CA. New
York Representatives who have signed on include: Joseph Crowley,
Maurice Hinchey, Carolyn Maloney, Charles Rangel, Edolphus Towns,
Michael McNulty, Gregory Meeks, Major Owens, Jose Serrano, Nydia
Velazquez. In CT, Rosa DeLauro has signed on. In
NJ, Robert Andrews, Donald Payne. In PA, Robert Brady,
Chaka Fattah.
If your rep is on this list, consider calling or sending them
an e-mail thanking them and urging them to keep working on this
issue. If they are not on the list (Rep. Nadler, among
others), please call, write, e-mail your rep today and urge him/her
to sign on.
As you probably know, the G8 cancelled some debt in 2005, but
it was a first small step toward the goals of cancelling the
debt, increasing aid, and making trade fair--the Millennium Development
Goals (targets for poverty reduction set by the UN) for many
of the world's most impoverished countries. We are pushing
for extended debt cancellation without harmful economic policy
strings attached.
2.) HR 888 is a bill for 100 percent debt cancellation
for Haiti. In Haiti, 80 percent of the population lives
in abject poverty and one out of nine children die before reaching
their fifth birthday. In 2005 the country's total external
public debt reached $1.3 billion, nearly half of which was accrued
under the 29-year Duvalier regime. After elections earlier this
year, Haiti finally became eligible for admission into the Heavily
Indebted Poor Countries program that could result in debt cancellation
from the World Bank and the IMF. However, under the harmful economic
conditions of the debt cancellation program, Haiti will not see
any debt relief until December 2009--nearly $220 million in debt
service that could have gone toward education, health care, and
other social services. The existing program also excludes
cancellation of Inter-American Development Bank debt, which makes
up nearly half of Haiti's debt to international financial instituions.
This bill calls on the World Bank, IMF, and IDB to completely
and immediately cancel Haiti's debt to those institutions.
NY reps who have signed on include Josephy Crowley, Charles Rangel,
Jose Serrano, Edolphus Towns, David Price, Major Owens, Greg
Meeks, Carolyn Maloney, Maurice Hinchey, Eliot Engel.
Please consider calling and asking your rep to sign on if he/she
hasn't done so, and please thank those who have.
Thanks for considering what you can do about this issue.
For more information, please see http://www.jubileeusa.org.
To find your representative's contact information, go to www.house.gov.
The following news item about pregnant teens at a high school
in my home town was featured on a Saturday Night Live episode
with the punchline being that the school had an abstinence only
sex education policy. My question: Could it be that there have
always been this percentage of pregnant teens but now (yeah!)
the teen moms are not allowing themselves to be coerced into
leaving school and are staying in school? Just a question!
Thanks again to Enid for a heads up on a report on feministing.com
about teen pregnancy:
"In Canton, Ohio, a school board decided to expand sex
education to allow for discussion on contraception after realizing
that 13 percent of one high school's female students were
pregnant.
There were 490 female students at Timken High School in 2005,
and 65 were pregnant, WEWS-TV in Cleveland reported.
The new Canton school board program promotes abstinence but
also will teach students who decide to have sex how to do so
responsibly, bringing the city school district's health curriculum
in line with national standards."---feministing.com
Good old Canton, Ohio, my hometown. And I wrote the book on
it: The Amazing True Story of a Teenage Single Mom by Katherine
Arnoldi.
The Katherine Arnoldi Scholarship
Fund for Teenage Mothers at the Calvert Giving Fund could
accept donations of over $250 which would go directly into the
fund. Interested? I'll send you all the information about how
you can make a tax deductible contribution. (Or just mail the
check of $250 or more to the Katherine Arnoldi Scholarship Fund
for Teenage Mothers at The Calvert Giving Fund, Calvert Foundation,
7315 Wisconsin Avenue Suite 1100, West Bethesda, MD 20814. You
will recieve all the necessary receipts to take the tax deduction
for your gift) . Make check out to Calvert Foundation with Katherine
Arnoldi Scholarship Fund on the memor line. Thanks so much!!
The fund will give its first $500 award this Fall. Email me at
equalrightsformoms@yahoo.com
Last night at my friend Steve Cannon's art collective,
A Gathering of the Tribes (see links
page), saw Butch Morris lead his Chorus of Poets, then Billy
Bang played in the garden in an event that I could only say,
I thought I died and went to heaven. Once, many years ago, in
the late 80's, when I was putting together Tribes first magazine
with a work by David Hammons on the cover, I became very sick
with pnuemonia (actually the third time I died) and was hospitalized
for several weeks at Bellevue Hospital, where they actually saved
my life, but that is another story. Anyway, in the middle of
the night, I was awoken by another patient, most who were homeless
people trying to get off the streets and to some warmth and food.
The patient said to me, "Come quick, to the day room."
It was probably 2am but when I got to the day room it was packed
with all the patients from the floor. On the little TV was a
jazz special on PBS. One patient, missing both legs, looked at
me and said, "I thought I died and went to heaven,"
about discovering this show on TV, which featured the greats
of jazz. We all sat there as one body, our hearts and minds tuned
to jazz. Another New York moment.
Another surprise: last week I had seen an interesting
person at Roosevelt Hospital where I get the medicine that keeps
me alive. Later I wish I would have spoken to him, as I could
tell we were members of the same tribe of conscious artists.
Then, there he was at Tribes: Peter Cox, who told me he runs
the jazz scene at Brecht Forum. Of course. And of course we will
all meet, either on this earthly plane now or later in another
world. We all know each other and will be together by and by.
May the circle be unbroken.
I was at the Bronx Library Center allegedly teaching the
graphic novel to students who already are the best artists, writers
and human beings imaginable, when one young woman told me she
could not be at the next session because she would be going to
a college preperation class. The boy immediately across from
her said, "You're not going to go to college. You are going
to get pregnant and be a teenage mother and a drop out. You won't
even finish high school." She said, "I am not,"
but, well, there is the possibility for every young woman, for
12,000 young girls in New York City and 500,000 in the U.S. who
do give birth. When will the world ever learn that denying equal
rights is not the way to lower teen pregnancy?
At the NOW conference this year in Albany I attended a
session on teen pregnancy and had to sit quietly while some in
the room spewed out the trash they must have heard on day time
TV about how young girls get pregnant because they "want
something to love," or some such nonsense. Finally it was
my turn to speak. "How many women in this room could have
gotten pregnant as a teenager?" I asked. "And, had
you kept the child, would that have been because you wanted something
to love? What we can do is when our television stations perpetrate
these stereotypes that reinforce the denial of equal rights to
a huge group of our population and forces them into poverty,
is to write the television stations, stage protests that let
them know we will not tolerate programs that denigrate of women
or trivialize the immensity of their problems. I was furious.
If these supposedly aware women are swallowing this crap, what
about the average Joe? Enid Mastrianni had been the one to suggest
I attend the conference and speak on a panel on Title 9, which
I did, about using Title 9 to prevent high schools from coercing
teen moms to leave schools (which they do more than ever) and
to increase accessibility for moms on college campuses. Well,
I gave them a piece of my mind and a little bit of my heart.
Take it, take a little bit of my heart.
An old friend called to say he saw the O'Jays in a free concert
in downtown Canton, Ohio, my home town. He informed me the O'Jays
were from Canton. Made me proud. To see my graphic novel memoir
of growing up in Canton, Ohio go to Canton,
Ohio
Saturday night went to the People's Republic of Brooklyn
to see Toshi Reagon, thanks to my Clearwater friend, Lydia,
who was "with the band." Toshi Reagon, daughter of
Bernice Johnson Reagon of Sweet Honey and the Rock who was on
stage with her, rocked. Check out her website, www.toshireagon.com.
Apparently Bernice was friends with Toshi and Pete Seeger back
when she was part of the Freedom Singers and when she got pregnant
and since her husband was in jail, she stayed with Pete and Toshi,
which explains the name of her now very big baby girl. Big and
Lovely, the band, also rocked and the whole evening was church
for me in the sense that I came away inspired to keep on, to
keep believing and to keep the faith. Once I saw a dance performance
by Pat Cremins, brilliant dancer and artist, and I said to her,
Pat, you got it right, this is the life of the artist. You get
knocked down. You roll around on the floor for a while. Then
you pull yourself up again. Then you trip your own self up and
fall down and roll around on the floor for a while. Then you
spring up and dance again. Then you just slump down and roll
around on the floor for a while. Then you get pulled back up
by friends and so on.... We artists need to inspire each other,
and Toshi Reagon sure did that for me.
I am in the She Draws Comics Show: 100 Years of Women Cartoonists
at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art, 594 Broadway Suite
401 between Houson and Prince ( http://www.moccany.org/index.html)
curated by Trina Robbins (see my links page).
The fabulous Trina Robbins who has been collecting researching
and championing the art of women cartoonists with verve, spunk,
vivaciousness and alacrity, has been putting exhibitions together
like this show which traveled throughout Europe: at the Succesion
Museum in Vienna, in Gijon, Spain, in Portugal and Germany and
in the US at the Cartoon Museum in San Francisco. I traveled
to Vienna with the show and to Gijon, where on a bus trip to
the University where we were to give a talk, Trina burst out
in song: singing everything from Janis Joplin to Frank Sinatra.
Actually Trina is a bit of a Janis Joplin of Cartooning, belting
out the truth!!
This year I started the Katherine
Arnoldi Scholarship Fund for Teenage Mothers, a Charitable
Trust which will give scholarships to teen moms in New York City.
Years ago I put a garden in the East Village, working on what
was at my feet. To see my East Village
Garden, click here
Today is the Fast for Peace demonstration in New York City
( from the Village Voice: "In New York-the
hot dog-eating capital of the country-McAnanama and Bronson will
skip meals for 24 hours down at the Battery, in front of the
East Coast Memorial to Americans who died at sea in World
War II. McAnanama (who was in the service during the Vietnam
War; Bronson served in Korea)expects a few dozen people to join
at least part of their fast, which runs from 3 p.m. Monday until
3 p.m. on the Fourth." )
I noticed that Dick Gregory was fasting and protesting
in Washington, DC. In 1975 Kwame Hamilcar, Tom Lapham and I made
a trip from my home, the Sunshine
House Cooperative, Denver ,to see Dick Gregory speak at the
University in Fort Collins, Colorado. Dick Gregory said that
the hippies were the new group that would be marginalized and
recently a young person said to me: How did the hippies have
all that foresight to see what we are just now finding out is
true? Marginalization is a great tool of the dominant culture,
the military-industrial complex to attempt to squealch ideas
which threaten them. I have spent my life marginalized by my
family, friends, and society. Thou preparest a table before me
in the presence of my enemies. thou annointeth my head with oil.
My cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life.
I have finished my graphic novel on globalization, the neo-liberal
agenda and resistance. A very big book indeed: almost 300 pages!
Time for the 2nd Annual Art Yard Sale Fundraiser for Steve
Cannon and a Gathering of the Tribes to be on Saturday July
29 1-7:30 to be followed by music by Ustad Kadar Khan and Ensemble
(tabla, sitar and saragi). Please donate art or come by Tribes,
285 East 3rd Street for a bargain. Merry Fortune and I left Steve
Cannon's last Friday and stopped by the Catholic Worker Maryhouse
on 3rd. I felt like I was walking into the Entertaining Angels
movie: everyone seemed like Peter Marin or Dorothy Day. I wanted
to stay. I thought this is the cooperative living situation I
have been looking for. Is this the place for me? The June July
issue of the Catholic Worker contains a letter from Clare Grady,
still at the Federal Detention Center in Philadelphia. Is the
Catholic Worker the cooperative living situation I have been
searching for?
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