November 4, 2022

Harry Belafonte in Los Angeles, Summer 1961. An outdoor theatre -- just lovely

I was 13 and visiting friends of the family. Mrs M and another lady took me, and aside from the performance and his marvellous voice, I learned something surprising about grown-up ladies.

On the way home, Mrs M’s friend said, “He can put his shoes under my bed any time.”

October 29, 2022

Look, it did not happen and it would not happen here on Planet Earth. The trouble with posts like...

… this one is that first and foremost our Dems do not do this crap in the first place. It is not helpful to do “thought experiments” that insert untrue events and motives into people’s heads.

Secondly, it doesn’t matter how hard we try to conciliate the GOP or negotiate with them or appease them — nothing works. Joe Biden has been as bipartisan in his approach as it is possible to be, and his reward has been that someone he thought was a friend (Lindsey Graham) dishonorably savaged Joe’s son; and GOPers in the House have put up 14 different impeachment bills just to stay in practice.

In the coming House term, if the Republicans control the House, they have made it pellucidly clear that they plan to impeach the entire top tier of the presidential line of succession: Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Nancy Pelosi. They mentioned someone else recently as well, but there you have it: since assassination has not yet worked, they will wreak havoc and make it impossible to do the business of governing.

And that is ALL on the GOP. No “both sides” about it.

October 20, 2022

I feel like I spent my whole adult life deluded. I turned 21 in 1968 & became a Dem forever...

I’m a very small player in the grand scheme of things — was a vigorous supporter of Planned Parenthood; spent 13 years on my County’s Affirmative Action Commission; worked hard with the local Vets for Peace against Dubya & his damn war — liaised with all the local groups in putting on town halls and such….

I couldn’t believe it when SCOTUS gutted the Voting Rights Act. Felt absolutely gut-punched when SCOTUS destroyed Roe v. Wade. I couldn't stop crying that day.

I am just out of words. Everything I’ve believed in and worked for... I feel like an ant.

Okay, I’ll catch my breath tomorrow. And you know what? Ants can shift heavy loads. So there is that. It is not over.

October 9, 2022

Toddlers are random creatures. I snatched a neighbor's child out of the traffic when she ran...

…out between her dad’s parked truck and another parked car. Just like that. It was only happenstance that I saw her in the small moment while her parents’ backs were turned. Toddlers aren’t rational.

Even the best dog can be startled and react. I was at a baby shower, sitting on the floor next to my daughter’s doggy, one of my favorite dogs ever — under-5 pounds of Jack Russell/Pomeranian cross, super smart. A toddler was on the couch and rolled off; in a split second I knew the wee girl wasn’t going to be hurt by the fall, but the dog would be crushed, and I put my hand between them as fast as ever I could. The dog snapped, and I was frankly surprised at how badly my finger was slashed by her little teeth.

The pit bulls in the OP had their lives all figured out and running smooth for 6 years before the first baby showed up. That’s stressful. Then it became a toddler, and another baby showed up.

You want a baby-sitter, get a golden retriever or border collie or a Labrador.

October 7, 2022

She didn't do that, did she?

The day she died, one of our members wrote a post of such venom it got removed. “Rest in screaming torture Loretta Lynn Vagina Traitor” was the theme. And no, it was not I who alerted on it or served on the jury.

I understand rage. In a recent thread about Lindsay Graham I did not call him Miss or any of that other stuff, but I did call him an mfer and I was in such a rage I spelled it out, more than once. Call me an old silly, but I never knew that was homophobic until my post got removed, alleging that reason. If every post at DU using mfer got removed — well, at least our language would be cleaner.

No, the fine Suthen gennlemun is a highly educated, privileged, white, male, extremely powerful US Senator who has announced there should be a nationwide federal ban on abortion, and that he’s going to get right on that as soon as the GOP takes back the Senate.

And LL is just the kind of woman he would condemn to death by perpetual pregnancy and childbirth, ignorant of her own basic health needs and unable to obtain health care, all her talents gone to waste.

There is a difference here.

October 7, 2022

Dear DUers: it is possible for us to hold more than one thought in the mind at a time...

Loretta Lynn had four babies by the time she was 18. She was 90 when she died, having had a stroke in 2017. There was a whole complicated life — a woman’s life — in between.

When I was in community college one of my classmates, a woman on her way to being the class Valedictorian, told me how she married straight out of high school (older than Loretta, who sounds like she got married straight out of jr. high) She told me how she sat in the doc’s exam room, pregnant for the 3rd time, and burst into tears of shame because she honest to god had no idea how or why she was “that way” again and had no idea how to make it stop.

I was 18 at the time, and my mom had been generous with information — tho in 1966 it was understood I was supposed to be saving up this information for eventual marriage. My friend was 10 years older — and clearly she and her husband finally got the reproductive education they deserved to have, because when her third & final kid entered kindergarten, she enrolled in community college and never looked back. Straight As. A scholarship afterward to a good private college in commuting distance. And all the while raising her kids.

I never forgot my classmate. She’d be 85 by now, just 5 years younger than Loretta Lynn, who came from Butcher Holler and had to figure this all out for herself. When Loretta wrote “The Pill” it was a scandal to the jaybirds. Goddess rest her soul for showing women of her class and generation that there was a different path.

There’s more than one kind of oppression — but as for her alleged racism, which keeps coming up here like a bad lunch:

When she was in contention for the entertainer of the year award from the Country Music Assn. in 1972, she was advised that if she won, she should not touch Charley Pride, the Black country singer who was to present the award, to preserve her image among country’s largely white, Southern audience. She ignored the warning when she did win and hugged Pride.
*****In 2013, President Obama gave her the Medal of Freedom.
Los Angeles Times, page A1, Oct. 5, 2022

September 27, 2022

Using an open grave to dig up old wars is unseemly at best. He was one of DU's bright lights....

I’m sorry Will is gone — he was one of DU’s bright lights in our early days. I didn’t follow his career after he left, since DU is my only online community, but it looks like he did well and I’m glad.

Now he has gone where all wounds are healed, all petty squabbles forgotten, the great battles of our time laid down. RIP, Will Pitt, may your family be comforted.

🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺

September 27, 2022

Was here from the beginning. Activist, history teacher, journalist, author, devoted father & husband

Here’s what remains of his Profile:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=profile&uid=115040

All quarrels are forgiven — go in peace, Will Pitt. You are gone much, much too soon. May your family be comforted.

September 15, 2022

Again and again and again, the goal is reached. See history...

From this thread

229. How many DUers are still out there that are willing to give money, never bothering

to read comments that shed the light on this scam?

Started last September

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100215909861

In October he reached his goal

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100215946390

Not yet, new year now in January

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100216254697

And in April

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10181653807

And in May

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100216659843

And so it goes.

No, I did not donate. By the time I found one of the earlier one I read all the comments about suggestions that go no where and, yes, a list of the never ending GFM.

Oh, on edit, he reached his goal in July

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10181683562

and so it goes

**************************

September 11, 2022

Just a side point: Elementary school students should have stayed in place until parent or guardian

…were able to get them. I’m sure there is such a plan for children too young to be let loose in an emergency.

About 1956 a military jet crashed on the athletic field of the jr hi school next door to my elementary school. It was class change at the jr hi and they lost 13 kids, but we in the elementary school were indoors and okay. As far as anyone knows the pilot, clipped by another plane at altitude, aimed for as open a space as he could.

In any case, my mother claimed my brother and me, plus two neighbor kids whose parents were at work.
💔💔💔
I am glad you were okay — thank you for sharing. I’m starting to tear up at people’s reminiscences. My daughter was at work and I was sleeping in after a late night writing on my dissertation. About 9:00 our time in California she phoned to order me to turn on the TV because New York was under attack.

No matter how far away you were from NYC and the Pentagon, you were in some way touched personally, far closer than “6 degrees of separation.” My sis in Massachusetts — well, 4 of her children’s schoolmates lost their grandmothers on flights out of Boston that day. When Bush got his war, one of my niece’s friends, by then 18, joined up out of patriotism; called his dad from Italy and said how badly they were equipped — and died outside Kirkuk. My best friend and her husband were civil servants working in D.C. when the city shuddered with the impact on the Pentagon. In years to come they ultimately changed the family name to something less recognizable than Akbar, because of all the blowback.

My life changed too. I had so many plans for my activities after finishing my dissertation and getting my PhD. I did finish — knowing that BushCheneyRumsfeld would neither know nor care if I failed to do so, but I’d care. But afterward, I shelved my book and joined the war resistance, knowing there would be no going back.