Break your addiction to oil

Beloved readers, this was a note some time ago in a message in the Grist, a wonderful environmental newsletter, in an entry about what we can do about the oil tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico.

The immediacy of that crisis seems to have faded, but the message persists.
Under this topic were four suggestions:
1. take stock of your own carbon footprint
2. get out of your car
3. Support sustainable energy sources
4. Promote smarter transportation systems.

I'm in good shape for the first two, and hope you are too. My carbon footprint is a huge and scary thing, but I'm working on it. And in June I got serious about commuting via bus, and have used the car for work I think 3 times since then.

#3 and #4 are more challenging, at least for me. Any suggestions? Looks like a good way to flex those First Amendment rights of petitioning the government.

I would embrace suggestions.

Peace, y'all

Molly

Make your plans now. How will you recognize Women's Suffrage Day on August 26? That is the anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920. Our foremothers worked so hard to secure our right to vote. Then endured ridicule, imprisonment, even force-feeding.

Susan B. Anthony once was arrested for the "crime" of voting. As women were not allowed to vote, her attempt to do so was "criminal."

In many other countries voting is universal and compulsory. We don't have to vote. But we have that right. People have suffered and even died to secure and protect that right. I think that to NOT vote is an affront to those people.

I don't know how I will celebrate August 26 but I have started to think about it. My local League of Women Voters will have a party in the park--that's a start. Maybe I'll wear white, as did the suffragists.

Peace, y'all

Molly

Happy Birthday Lucretia Mott

Lucretia Mott was a mother of the women's rights movement.

On January 3, 1793, Lucretia Coffin Mott was born. She was a Quaker, and back in those days, men and women treated each other far more equally than they did in the larger culture. Lucretia's leadings brought her to forefront of the anti-slavery movement. In that capacity she traveled to England for an anti-slavery convention. But she could not sit with the rest of the delegates because she was a woman!!! This made quite a stir, but that is another story.

It was here she met another Quaker lady, Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The women decided they would have a women's rights convention along the lines of the anti-slavery convention, and in 1848 it materialized in Seneca Falls, NY. There she and others penned a "declaration of sentiments" based quite directly on the Declaration of Independence. This is considered the birth of the women's rights movement. But the Civil War loomed, and the larger issue of ending slavery took precedent.

Suffrage for women took a back seat to suffrage for blacks. Suffragists suppressed their pursuit of the vote to pursue basic freedoms for blacks. The fifteenth amendment gave black men the right to vote.

Then suffragists pursued the vote for women. Quaker ladies - Mott, Susan B Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Alice Paul--led these efforts. In college I attended Meeting in Gainesville Fl. The meeting had an old, old man named Roy Anthony. And when he was a boy, he spent time with his cousin (or aunt) Susan B. So I am one person removed from this other great Quaker lady.

I am proud (uh oh! grateful, grateful) of the Quakers of the past. Quakers found the truth of the evils of slavery much sooner than other Americans. They led the anti-slavery movement. They led the suffrage movement. What next?

What can any of us do if we have righteous passion? Then link up with others of the same nature. And move mountains? At least move part of the universe along in the right direction.

Peace, y'all

Molly