Agnes Gereb

Hungarian is the language of love. Not French. You will fall in love with a person speaking French. You learn Hungarian after you fall in love with a person when you discover their Hungarian origin. I did. And the language and the country and the man I fell in love with still leave me speechless at times. 

Today I am using my voice in solidarity with a Hungarian woman, Agnes Gereb, who was sentenced to two years in jail for charges relating to her practice as a midwife. Hungary, led by the nationalist, Viktor Orban, has passed public policy that encourages birth. For a country that knows its population (and power) are decreasing, there are seemingly only two responses: women have to give birth and refugees have to be turned away. In this country that seeks to create a culture that values family, at least procreation, it seems the ultimate irony that they simultaneously persecute a midwife. 

Yet it is far from ironic. It is cynical. It rings true for the famously pessimistic, long-suffering Hungarians. It is worse than cynical, however. It is tyrannical. It is the establishment (patriarchy, government, medicine) exercising power. It is rape. We should not limit rape to the invasion of a body. It does not do justice to the systematic abuse of power that seeks its own existence rather than serving the people. It is illiberal. Which is exactly what Orban has articulated. He seeks to create an illiberal democracy that controls its population rather than defends its citizens. 

Times up, Orban. My Hungarian friends in Budapest, where I lived with my two children for five years, see themselves as citizens first. They are outraged at Agnes’ incarceration. Their message is clear: We see Orban’s duplicity. We stand with Agnes Gereb and demand justice for her, for all of us. Hungarians need to act with their hearts, speaking the language of love, to defeat the cynicism that defines and limits them.

#midwife #Hungary #womensrights #birth #illiberal #Orban #OBR

Bitching

Hello,

I attended the Sunday 1:00 pm performance of the Wizard of Oz at the Opera House.I bought four tickets and attended with my daughter, a friend, and her daughter. The tickets were $119 and we were seated in the orchestra, row u, seats 105,106,107,108. We experienced two problems:

Handicapped seats were placed on both ends of our row. Both patrons were unable to stand once seated. This forced us to awkwardly crawl over an elderly lady to enter our seats and at intermission, even at the end of the show. Surely there must be a better solution?

Also, at intermission we went directly from our seats to the women's restroom. Nevertheless, my daughter and friend (who needed the facilities) were unable to do so in time. They missed two major musical scenes because of the long lines or lack of suitable women's restrooms. This is infuriating. After spending nearly $500 on tickets, I feel this is an unacceptable way to treat a patron. Especially a nine-year-old girl.

Many thanks for your attention,

Janet Kelley

brown girl dreaming

lessons

by Jaqueline Woodson

My mother says:

When Mama tried to teach me

To make collards and potato salad

I didn't want to learn.

She opens the box of pancake mix, adds milk

And eggs, stirs. I watch

Grateful for the food we have now--syrup waiting

In the cabinet, bananas to slice on top.

It’s Saturday morning.

Five days a week, she leaves us

To work at an office back in Brownsville.

Saturday we have her to ourselves, all day long.

Me and Kay didn't want to be inside cooking.

She stirs the lumps from the batter, pours it

Into the buttered, hissing pan.

Wanted to be with our friends

running wild through Greenville.

There was a man with a peach tree down the road.

One day Robert climbed over that fence, filled a bucket

With peaches. Wouldn't share them with any of us but

Told us where the peach tree was. And that's where we

wanted to be

sneaking peaches from that man’s tree, throwing

the rotten ones

at your uncle!

Mama wanted us to learn to cook.

Ask the boys, we said. And Mama knew that wasn't fair

Girls inside and boys going off to steal peaches!

So she let us all of us

Stay outside until suppertime.

And by then, she says, putting our breakfast on the table,

it was too late.  

Women Who Work

This woman is raising her four kids by carrying her own body weight in goods. Every. single. day. pic.twitter.com/nrUBzqJsIv

— AJ+ (@ajplus) January 4, 2018

RUSSIA i see you

I just had 141 visits to my blog yesterday. All from Russia. #yikes

I Hear You

Theme for English B

BY LANGSTON HUGHES

The instructor said,

      Go home and write

      a page tonight.

      And let that page come out of you—

      Then, it will be true.

I wonder if it’s that simple?

I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem.   

I went to school there, then Durham, then here   

to this college on the hill above Harlem.   

I am the only colored student in my class.   

The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem,   

through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas,   

Eighth Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y,   

the Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator   

up to my room, sit down, and write this page:

It’s not easy to know what is true for you or me   

at twenty-two, my age. But I guess I’m what

I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you.

hear you, hear me—we two—you, me, talk on this page.   

(I hear New York, too.) Me—who?

Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.   

I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.   

I like a pipe for a Christmas present,

or records—Bessie, bop, or Bach.

I guess being colored doesn’t make me not like

the same things other folks like who are other races.   

So will my page be colored that I write?   

Being me, it will not be white.

But it will be

a part of you, instructor.

You are white—

yet a part of me, as I am a part of you.

That’s American.

Sometimes perhaps you don’t want to be a part of me.   

Nor do I often want to be a part of you.

But we are, that’s true!

As I learn from you,

I guess you learn from me—

although you’re older—and white—

and somewhat more free.

This is my page for English B.

Langston Hughes, “Theme for English B” from Collected Poems. Copyright © 1994 by The Estate of Langston Hughes. Reprinted with the permission of Harold Ober Associates Incorporated.

Source: Selected Poems (Vintage Books, 1959)

Gilded Snow

Middle-Aged: A Study in an Emotion

BY EZRA POUND

A STUDY IN AN EMOTION

"'Tis but a vague, invarious delight. 

As gold that rains about some buried king. 

As the fine flakes, 

When tourists frolicking 

Stamp on his roof or in the glazing light 

Try photographs, wolf down their ale and cakes 

And start to inspect some further pyramid; 

As the fine dust, in the hid cell beneath 

Their transitory step and merriment, 

Drifts through the air, and the sarcophagus 

Gains yet another crust 

Of useless riches for the occupant, 

So I, the fires that lit once dreams 

Now over and spent, 

Lie dead within four walls 

And so now love 

Rains down and so enriches some stiff case, 

And strews a mind with precious metaphors, 

And so the space 

Of my still consciousness 

Is full of gilded snow, 

The which, no cat has eyes enough 

To see the brightness of."

Mother

#amandapalmer #mother #trump #breastisbest


https://vimeo.com/242575536

To Spin on Command

The Movements of Mechanical Objects

by Rebecca Morgan Frank


Someone keeps opening the music box
in the middle of the night.

It used to play "Clair de lune," now
plays Muzak versions of the latest pop song.

I sleep with one eye open.
The figurine has surely been pushing

her way out. Her toes are so slender
she can pry open the lock.

Her sleek limbs bunch their muscles
as she lifts the lid, and

for seconds, she looks
like a sumo wrestler in her tutu.

If you asked her, she'd tell you
what it's like to be buried alive.

To spin on command.
She's been studying to be a DJ.

There are lots of classes on the internet,
she'll say. A girl can be anything.

But the dark trope only lets
her rise into a sea of pink

with plush dolphins.
Maybe I'll grow up,

she says, looking around,
to be a veterinarian.

You don't tell her that her veneer
is wrinkling and her belly

bulges like a squeezed tube.
Her eyes chip

away without her notice.
It won't be long until

she's retired. The body
junked and thrown

from the box. Separated
from everything that moves.

https://www.amazon.com/Sometimes-Living-Foreign-Country-Carnegie/dp/0887486258/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1510842214&sr=8-1&keywords=rebecca+morgan+frank

26 Dead, Again

I think it is a mistake to reduce this repeated public health/safety issue to EVIL. It is not pure evil. What is evil? A classic definition is that it is the absence of what is good, from Aquinas. So, in that sense there is evil in this equation. Our public policy does not support the mentally ill, does not address the issue of domestic violence AND provides easy/legal access to firearms. This means we have created a culture that allows these shootings.

EVIL is not a force out of nowhere, a big bad devil. It is when there is a good--civic life and even perhaps the right to own guns--that is flawed. The shooters are wrong, they are criminal, they are mentally ill, they are domestic abusers, or all of the above. But the shooter is not evil, the culture that has given him access to guns is. 

Don't call the shooter's acts evil. If you do, it means that there is NOTHING that can be done to prevent this symptom of evil (a lack of public policy regarding mental health/domestic violence/guns). This is not true. If the society cannot see this, they lack insight--a technical psychological term. It means you are not able to know that you are sick, as in the case of schizophrenia. 

I don't know the way out of this conundrum. Except to teach my kids that access to mental health care and health care are essential, that domestic abuse is unacceptable, and that access to firearms should be regulated as part of our national security. 

There is no pure evil. Pure evil is a slogan, an excuse, a smokescreen. It cripples us. It prevents insight.