Category Archives: Politics

Help Spread Civility Through Example

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Grandparents can be models of civility for their grandchildren.

In a recent opinion piece, Sara Hacala lamented the absence of civility in our daily lives.  Stressing that technology has changed the way we communicate with others and that bad behavior is often awarded with celebrity, Hacala offered sensible ideas to encourage personal change.

Civility Tool Kit

  1. Practice the habits of kindness, generosity and gratitude.
  2. Increase face-to-face encounters and interactive phone calls to enrich your life, as they require more of a personal offering from you.
  3. Create meaningful, respectful dialogue with your doctors as relationships with medical personnel increase as we age.  Your provider works for you and you deserve compassionate treatment.  If you don’t get it, report the provider as negative evals cause loss of Medicare dollars.
  4. Hold elected officials accountable for their behavior and their statements.  Urge civil discourse among all to avoid negative impact that will not move our country forward.
  5. FINALLY: be an example of civility and manners for your children and grandchildren.  Teach them empathy and respect for others. 

This last points to our future.  If we are unable to help future generations see the positives of civility, negative behaviors will increase bringing strife and dissension.  Finding civility means achieving united goals and treating one another with compassion.

Pay It Forward

One example to follow is using the concept of “pay it forward” an idea fleshed out in the 2000 feature film with Kevin Spacey and Haley Joel Osment.

Ralph Waldo Emerson defined the concept: “…we cannot render benefits to those from whom we receive them…But the benefit we receive must be rendered again, line for line, deed for deed, cent for cent, to somebody.”

A member of Alcoholics Anonymous put it this way: “You can’t pay anyone back for what has happened to you, so you try to find someone you can pay forward.”

As parents and grandparents and members of the Boomer generation, we can definitely pay it forward.     

Communicate with your Child

In my post, New Moms: Talk to Your Child, http://bethhavey.wordpress.com/2011/04/08/new-moms-talk-to-your-child/

I laid out the positive first step to help future generations: sharing a kind and loving parental voice from the first hour of life.  This voice continues to provide a child with guidance and love and will keep a child close as growth lessons become necessary.

An angry voice cannot convey a message that will be heard and followed. Talking calmly, civilly if you will, to your child before she can even talk back, will prepare you for contentious situations when they begin.

Parents, grandparents, please develop listening skills and hold back opinion as you truly listen to what your child, teenager, young adult has to say.  Sitting down for a conversation, airing each other’s point of view will work better than an angry email or a text message filled with harsh words.

Steps to Help Future Generations Learn Civility

You might already be doing all of these things, so use it as a check-list:

  1. Provide young children with a group play situation where they are required to share toys and the world with other children.
  2. Help children get over shyness and fears by moving them out of the comfort zone through sharing, adapting to new environments.
  3. Help children understand what discipline is, what saying no means, and what rewards are and how to earn them.
  4. Teach children manners and good behavior.  In every new environment he/she should know proper behavioral conduct so that excesses at either end of the spectrum are avoided ie not too open with strangers, not reticent with teachers and friends, able to deal with bullies and peer pressure.
  5. Help children build good study habits, organize, prioritize and communicate with you.
  6. Help a child learn how to be alone with himself/herself. 

Parents and grandparents can be civil mentors in a young person’s life, helping grow and foster confidence and self-esteem.  In turn, our growing children and grandchildren will often show us the way.

Life can throw all of us into tricky situations and having examples of civility to model will keep us on good and worthwhile paths.

Thanks to Bay Area Discovery Museum

Inglesa_loquita photostream

Grandparents and parents provide models for future behavior.

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Amahl and the Night Visitors: Offer Yourself to Someone in Need

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Woman, you can keep the gold.

I was ten when I stepped into the spotlight one Christmas night and performed various roles in Gian Carlo Minotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors. My older brother John and younger brother Bill also performed.   Our audience consisted of four very proud women—my grandmother, two aunts and my mother, who periodically dabbed at their eyes with tissue as they  laughed and cried during our performance.

If a reviewer had been there that night watching three eager children dressed in bathrobes and flowing dishtowels,  imitating the garments of Christ’s time, the best thing he or she would have written is that we knew the music—every note, every pause, every crescendo.  And we sang heartily the amazing, touching beautiful lyrics—yes, every word.

Written in 1951 for television, the opera tells the story of the poor young shepherd boy, Amahl, who in the vernacular of the day is crippled and hobbles around with the aid of a crutch.  He meets the three kings who are following the Christmas star to find Christ and deliver gifts of gold frankincense and myrrh to him.

The kings and their servant briefly stay with Amahl and his widowed mother late one night.  King Kaspar amuses everyone with his bird and various possessions which he keeps in a jeweled box.  Neighboring shepherds bring food to the destitute hovel and dance for the kings.  Later, as they dose, the mother sings of two children—the Christ child, a child of wheat, and her own disabled son, a child of thorn.  Frightened of the future and how she will care for her boy, she reaches out to take some of the kings’ gold, awakening their loyal servant.   He cries out that she is a thief and begins beating her, all the while accusing her of stealing.  Amahl limps to his mother’s defense, lashing out at the servant as best he can as he tries to balance on his weak legs.  Finally he falls into his mother’s arms, weeping.  King Melchoir then sings the most beautiful aria of the opera:

Oh woman, you can keep the gold,

The child we seek, doesn’t need our gold

On love, on love alone, he will build his city

His pierced hand will hold no scepter

His haloed head will wear no crown

His might will not be built on your toil

Swifter than lightning he will soon walk among us

He will bring us new life and receive our death.

And the keys to his city, belong to the poor.

At this point, Amahl slowly rises and offers the kings his crutch, asking them to take it to the new baby as who knows, he might need one.  As Amahl extends his only possession to the kings, a miracle occurs and he finds that he is able to walk!

The opera had been a gift to us three children a few years before, a set of four 45 rpm records that played loudly from our dining room.  Occasionally we stopped the performance to change the record!  But we sang on.  Bill, the youngest, was King Kaspar, proudly sitting beside my mother’s small lingerie chest and opening  each drawer to produce magic stones, beads, and the prized licorice during his aria.  His companion was our canary, Peter Fritz, who playing the role of Kaspar’s bird did his usual thing—scattering droppings and newspaper shreds through the bars of his cage.

During the shepherds’ song the three of us disappeared into the kitchen to return with a basket of bananas and oranges to set before our bemused audience.  We then twirled and danced the shepherds wild and free dance along the living room floor, careful not to knock each other over on our so small stage.

But even though we lacked the accoutrements necessary for a great performance, we did not lack the heart and soul, the love and involvement.  The music of Gian Carlo Minotti spoke to us and changed us even at our very young ages.  As I write this memory today, I have chills hearing Minotti’s haunting melodies in my mind and remembering his beautiful words.  This Christmas and all through the year we should offer ourselves to those in need—because the keys to his city belong to the poor.

MERRY CHRISTMAS and Happy Holidays to everyone!

(this is a repost)
Thanks to Beesonell Photostream
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Thank You Gloria Steinem For Paving The Way For Women

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This post is graciously reposted here thanks to its author: Judi who writes at

What a relaxing evening I had last night. I took a break and watched the HBO Documentary Gloria In Her Own Words.  The Gloria was Gloria Steinem.  I watched and I remembered and throughout the program, as Gloria spoke, all I wanted to say was “Thank You, Gloria.”

I wanted to “thank” Gloria for paving the way so that I could have a successful career.  I wanted to thank Gloria for working as a Playboy bunny to write an expose when she was 28 years old, so that women who came after her didn’t have to wear bunny tails.

Gloria started the feminist movement in the late ’60s into the early ’70s.  I wasn’t even a teenager then.  I was only 11 years old.  It’s hard to believe that when I was 11 years old, some bars and restaurants did not allow women to dine in their establishments. Imagine that.

I wanted to “thank” Gloria for starting MS magazine in the ’70s.  That was about the time I was entering high school and then college.  I read MS magazine.  Did you?  Ms became an optional title without a married title. Little did I know that 30 years later I would use the Ms title when I turned 50 and became a widow.

Gloria shared her story about her mom.  Her mom was a pioneer in journalism in Toledo.  However, Gloria said that “she could not do it all and she had a nervous breakdown” when Gloria was a young girl.  Her parents were divorced and she had to take care of her mother.  Gloria did what her mother always wanted to do in her life – Gloria became a journalist.

“A lot of my generation are living out the un-lived lives of our mothers,” Gloria said.  I may not be of your generation Gloria, but as a baby boomer, I too believe I am living out the un-lived life of my mother.  I always thought my mother wanted to go to college, but she was never able to because her father died at a young age and she had to go to work to help support her family.  I bet my mom would have been a great elementary school teacher if she had had a chance to continue her education.  My sister N and I learned so much from my mom and I know other children would have benefited too.

Gloria turned 50 in 1984.  I was 26 in 1984, almost half her age.  That was the year I got married to my late husband M.  In 1984, Gloria said that “50 is what 40 used to be.”  In 2011, we say “50 is the new 30.”  Gloria said that “turning 50 was hard because it was the end of something.”  Now, we say “50 is the start of the second half of your life.”  Perceptions have sure changed in the last quarter century.

I was surprised when the powerful Gloria Steinem admitted that she hit bottom in 1992.  She said she realized that she had little self-esteem. She had been a neglected child.  How sad.  That is when she wrote “Revolution from Within.”  I too had self-esteem issues when I was growing up.  I’ll have to read her book.

Gloria ended the evening with a fine piece of advice to the younger folks (that includes me too, right?). “Do not listen to my advice,” she said.  ”Listen to the voice within yourself.”

At fifty-something, I’ve finally found my voice, and I’m finally listening to it.

I’m glad “you love being here Gloria and I hope you live to 100,” just as you said in your own words last night.

Judi

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What Do Teachers Really Do?

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I was a teacher.  I am a nurse.   I have been in the trenches as a public worker and I know the importance of bargaining power.

In 1969, when I started my first teaching job, I made $7,350.00.  In present day value at 3% cost of living that’s $25,436.00.   My father-in-law used to tease me that I had the summer off. (Actually I taught summer school t

o make more money.)  He changed his criticism when he learned what I actually did for that salary:

  • Worked from 7:00 to 4:00.
  • Taught 5 classes of 25-30 students.
  • In teacher-speak had 3 preparations, meaning three different classes  (Humanities, Novel or basic sophomore English, for example) translation: lots of work the night before.
  • Read, corrected and graded papers for these 150 students—translation, worked on the weekends.
  • Presented long works of fiction—translation, read on the weekends.
  • Had to take an extra assignment—like coaching or mentoring, a rule at my school.  Translation: went to games and dances and tournaments on the weekends.
  • Inserted school business and paperwork into each day: attendance reports, notices to student nurse, counselors, deans; reports to principal, department chair; parent-teacher meetings and phone calls; frequent teacher meetings.
  • Created curriculum: tests, assignments, evaluations and interactive learning.

But here is the bottom line for being a teacher—and if the following was true for me, it’s even more true for any teacher working in the classroom today: you don’t know what will come in the door each day you are working.

I taught at Bloom Township High School in Chicago Heights, Illinois.  My school was a microcosm in the early 70s—Italian Americans, African Americans, whites from the south moving up to Chicago for better jobs, children of families whose presence in the suburb for years gave them ownership.   Result: problems—riots, fights, rule-breaking, school closures for safety reasons.  A policeman in the hallways.  Staggered scheduling to avoid having too many students in the building at one time.

And what did we teachers do?  We worked, we taught, we followed all the changes and we did everything we could to help our students.  Everyone one them:

  • the girl in Humanities that told me right out in class that when my husband traveled he was having affairs—interesting way to get out of talking about THE SCARLET LETTER.
  • the boy who came to my classroom every morning and flirted with me in a joking way, but I was only 23 and he was 17.
  • the 9th period coalition whose goal was to break me down in front of the class so they criticized everything I said, questioned everything I tried to teach them for weeks.  I did break down.
  • the kids coming to school sick, unfed, unclean, angry; kids sleeping all through class; kids telling you to f-yourself;
  • the kids who needed love as well as education, who needed someone to stand up for them and give them a chance to get on in the world.

Teachers do that for kids, every day.  And they aren’t someone else’s kids—they are your kids.  And I don’t care if the politicians in Wisconsin secretly set themselves aside because their children go to PRIVATE schools.  Believe me, these same problems occur in those schools and sometimes the teachers are not as well educated and prepared to deal with them.  PRIVATE schools don’t always have as many requirements for teachers because they often cannot pay them as well.

Teaching is a rich and varied profession.  Teaching requires dedication and desire—like medicine—but doctors make a whole lot more than teachers do.

Twenty years ago there was much talk about teachers not being paid enough, not being valued enough.

Now we are forcing teachers into the streets to ask for what they are owed.

STAND FOR TEACHERS and UNIONS and BARGAINING RIGHTS.

STAND FOR NURSES.  What do they do?

  • Nurses run hospitals, work crazy shifts, are there when your mother or father needs to urinate or be suctioned or saved by a Code Blue.
  • Fireman try to keep your house from becoming a total loss.
  • Policemen—enough said.

For those folks who don’t want to pay these members of our middle class, there’s an answer—go live off the grid.  Go to some mountain in Montana or Wyoming.  Teach your children yourself.  Protect your house and don’t even think about needing a hospital.

SUPPORT PUBLIC WORKERS, they work for you.

PS I taught for five years.  When I stopped to raise my children, I had only a $2,000 increase in salary.

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This Isn’t Happening

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This isn’t happening—a man shoots into a crowd killing six and wounding 18 innocent people, one a US Congresswoman, on a Saturday morning, in the bright sunshine of Tucson, Arizona.

Happy New Year.

I was going to write about balance.  In the new year.   You know, avoid going overboard with resolutions like exercise, dieting, decluttering—all the things that are hip to do just because the number changed from a 10 to an 11.

But all I can think about today is mental balance.   So necessary.  It’s actually called sanity.

But watching four film trailers on the same Saturday as the Tucson killings, my mental stasis was overcome by the abject violence that each film threw against the screen.  Bodies twisting and flailing, dropping and exploding, valleys of blood before my eyes, weapons everywhere.  And not one voice that came through all the booming and the clanging to say: ENOUGH!

The lights go up eventually (the feature TRUE GRIT was somewhat violent) and your eyes adjust back to reality and you stumble a little down the theatre steps, your ears ringing.  Entertainment?  A sneaky, insidious mental change agent.  And we think: This is okay.  This is normal.  This is part of the way things are.  Or we blithely tell ourselves–this is just fiction!  A story.  It’s not happening.

Really?

But in some writer and director and actor’s minds it’s a kind of reality.  They spend hours concocting such putrid stuff.  For greed?   Or to just throw up bread and circuses for the crowd.

Damn, I wish I could have shouted out in that theatre during those trailers ENOUGH, shut it off.  No more violence for 5 minutes please.  Give me, give our culture some balance.

Of course I might be thrown out of the theatre, subjected to a lot of stares.  Someone might cry out that I need a psych consult.

WELL SOMEBODY DOES!  In Iowa and Arizona I can pack a gun, just like the guys on the screen.  Whether I am in balance or not, I can buy a gun and lots of ammo.  I can go overboard.  I can declutter a room of human beings, exercise my 2nd amendment rights, make a resolution to protect myself from whatever!

This isn’t happening.  A steady diet of guns and more guns.

Yes it is.  In many states in America our right to bear arms could lead to the death of my grandchildren or my children or my neighbor or me.

Right at this moment I don’t know what to do about it.  Possibly: vote correctly.  Pray.  Be informed.

Join me.  And Happy New Year.

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Hillary Clinton and Me Part II

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I think my mother’s role in my life greatly contributed to my slow learning as far as fairness to women was concerned.  And it should have been the exact opposite.  My mother should have been angry that her salary in downtown Chicago did not compensate her to care for three children like it would have if she had a penis.  But my mother didn’t really want to be in the business world.  Her so-called success there (she held a job in the same insurance agency until she was 80) didn’t really register with her.  She had always wanted to be married and raise six children.  She got three and a dead husband.  She had no degree.  She will tell you to this day, even though she had two single sisters who worked hard for the money they made in the publishing business, that men should make more money than women because they are supporting families.  She condemned feminist thinking and would get up and walk out of the room when the conversation turned to such talk. 

I don’t know why.  She could have gone to school, worked her way up in the business world, but she didn’t really want to be there, so she just held on.  I think a lot of women do.  To digress, I became a nurse in 1993.  I was 46.  I immediately experienced the back-biting and jealousies that often pervaded a hospital unit.   I didn’t like it.  Women need to work together to further themselves.  When after only three years as a floor nurse I got a job being a nurse outside the hospital, a former staff member said, “But you took a cut in pay to do this.”  When I told her that no, I actually would be making more money, she glared at me.  How dare I advance myself.  She had no guts for it, so why should I?

I still believe firmly that nurses need labor unions.  Nurses work 8 or 12 hour shifts.  On many days they do not get a lunch break or bathroom break.  I worked in labor and delivery.  Oh yes, I was birthing babies, how lovely.  But to get to that point there’s a whole lot of work.  And nurses don’t just stand at the bedside holding the hand of one laboring mother in a nice blue and pink room. 

I worked at Mercy Hospital on the south end of the loop in Chicago.  It was the early 90s.  We had a long hallway with labor rooms off one side and a delivery room and a surgical room off the other.  On every shift we had five nurses to the eight labor rooms that were almost always full.  At any given time the patients in those rooms could be in their first or second trimesters, contracting or bleeding or vomiting—terrified and scared.  Or they could be patients at various stages of labor.  But when you have one who is pushing, another whose fetal heart tones are dropping and needs a cesarean section which requires TWO nurses—one to scrub and one to circulate—and another who is screaming in pain and making everyone else jumpy–things start getting wild and crazy.  Get a break?  Go to the bathroom?  Forget it.  You move.  And you keep moving.  You put in an IV or take blood samples; you check the fetal monitor; you take away a bloody pad and give the woman a new fresh one; you page the doctor for her epidural; you give her ice chips; you chart; you deal with her mother who wants to be in the delivery and her significant other is saying no.  You keep moving.  Her light goes on and when you turn to go to her your nurse manager says you have another patient coming in; the ER doctor says she’s dilated to 9 and pushing.  She’s had no prenatal care.  Good luck.  You keep moving. 

But when the hospital boards cut back the extra money the charge nurse is supposed to get, or when they insist they won’t pay for overtime and you better swipe out before you are into overtime—the tendency is to go along.  Nurse leaders cave to the demands and they don’t fight for salary increases and better benefits. 

Being a former teacher and a member of the NEA, I have always seen the value of unions, the muscle of numbers.  I picketed for higher salaries and benefits when I was a young teacher.  And I worked hard at my job and never felt guilty that I was asking for more. 

Hillary saw much earlier than I did that women were not on equal ground and needed to fight for their place.   Out in the work place, it didn’t take me long to understand that.  And each year I see it more clearly.  Yes, I raised two daughters who are now independent and motivated.  They have masters degrees and can support themselves.  I am extremely proud of how they think, what they value.   And I have a son who is kind, smart, motivated and jokes that he is in touch with his feminine side.  I did good with him!

I am proud of my mother too.  Of what she accomplished as a single woman and mother.  She was of a different age and her loss of a husband, ironically, did not galvanize her into a feminist position, but made her long all her life for that FAMILY and husband that she had for a short nine years. 

Hillary only had one child and was able to continue her role as an attorney and then First Lady to the governor and then to the president.  Now she is Secretary of State.  She makes me proud of my womanhood, proud of my roots.  I cheer her on and admire her strength.  And if I were to be fortunate enough to meet her again, I would probably repeat the question: how do you get up every morning and do what you do–with the criticism swirling around you.  She’s a tough woman.  Go Hillary!

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Hillary Clinton and Me Part 1

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The inauguration was a year ago this week.  Pundits and the press are saying how far we have come from the positive feelings the country had when Barack Obama became president.  Now we are all hanging our heads and falling into despair.

I hate their commentary.  You keep saying negative things and quoting poll numbers and people begin to feel negative.  Barack Obama has accomplished a lot in his first year in office.  He had a shit-load of tough things to handle.  He had worked hard, passed important legislation and tried to be bipartisan while doing it.  He even offered his biggest opponent to the presidency, Hillary Clinton, an important job, Secretary of State. 

I met Hillary Clinton at the Drake Diner in November of 2007.  It’s a local eatery in Des Moines, Iowa, and we were both there at five in the morning—she to be interviewed by all the major networks, me to sit in a booth in the background and drink hot coffee.  I guess you could say I was window dressing.  But I wanted to be there and I did get to meet her.

When there was a break in the interviews, she came to our booth.  I leaned over, shook her hand (I had met her once before after a town hall meeting that previous January) and told her I was worried about her.  Was she getting enough sleep?  How did she do it every day?  She knocked the so-called wood of the shiny booth table and said so far she was hanging in there, doing just fine.  My husband John told me later he thought he saw a tear in her eye.  John is from a large dramatic Irish Catholic family.  His mother used to light blessed candles during a thunder storm.  Tear in her eye?  Hillary?  I don’t think so.  I was sure he was exaggerating. 

 Then came the iconic moment in New Hampshire.  In Portsmouth, Marianne Pernold Young, a photographer standing behind a table where Hillary was talking with 16 women voters, asked her a similar question.  “How do you do it?  How do you keep upbeat and so wonderful?”  And when Hillary replied about having help with her hair and then just went into the major guts of her life, her face pinked up, her armor crumbled, she got emotional.

            “I just don’t want to see us fall backward as a nation.  I mean, this is very personal for me. Not just political. I see what’s happening. We have to reverse it.  Some people think elections are a game: who’s up or who’s down.  It’s about our country. It’s about our kids’ future. It’s about all of us together. Some of us put ourselves out there and do this against some difficult odds.”

 My God, yes.  Difficult and impossible odds.  Talk about having to have thick skin.  But that’s what you need to be in politics, especially today when the color of your pantsuit can deflect from the important words you are saying or the actions you are implementing.     

 I am Hillary’s age.  We both graduated from high school in 1965.  We graduated from college in 1969.  We heard the news about Martin Luther King being shot under the same circumstances—away at school, struggling with course work and social stuff and bam—the world changes in a second.  And then in June, 1968, I’m doing final exams and Bobby Kennedy is assassinated.  How do you cope?  What makes any sense?   We both had those same questions.  But they took us down different pathways.

I got a job right out of college teaching English in a secondary school.  I needed money and had to turn down two scholarships to get a master’s degree, because I wanted to get my life going, I wanted to get married. 

I come from a family of English majors, readers, poetry lovers and classical music fanatics.  That is the richness that I inherited.  It swirled around me from the moment I could breathe.  But we did not have money.  My father died of a heart attack when I was 3.  I have an older and a younger brother.  My mother typed in our dining room to pay the bills.  She was tough and took good care of us.  By seventh grade she was working in downtown Chicago and I was in charge of laundry and cooking.  I also looked out for my younger brother.  And the widow-factor worked on me big time.  “Make sure you can get a job after college, that you can support yourself and a family.  Be a teacher.  You’ll have the summer off and you’ll be home in time to take care of your kids.” 

Make sure.  Make sure.  So there went the idea of going into advertising or just being a writer.  The widow-factor blunted the master’s degree goal.  And so did the Catholic-factor.  My mother not only raised us to love music and literature, she also raised us in the Catholic Church.  Hillary was a Methodist so she didn’t have nuns telling growing bodies that French kissing was evil.  She didn’t have an acne-faced priest tell a roomful of girls not to masturbate, that the temptation was always there.  How could he be sure about that temptation, someone asked?  Because he knew, he said with a soft smile.  Yikes.  

Senior year we all had to assemble for a sex talk given by a married couple.  Four girls asked what 69 meant and the couple kept evading and evading.  Hell, maybe they didn’t even know!!  Those were different times.  While Hillary was attending the Maine East and Maine South co-ed high schools, earning her National Merit scholarship and experiencing the highs and lows of the debate team, I was buried in the library at the Academy of Our Lady, again Catholic, all girls.  There I worked to get A’s to earn four scholarships and deal with the widow-factor.  I did sing in the Chorus and worked on the small yearbook.  Hillary was already becoming politically conscious.  I was already dating my future husband and writing in my diary about that.  But who could blame me?  My mother sang the praises of marriage and family, pined for my father, had no interest in meeting someone else.  She worked hard and worked for little pay because she did not have a college degree.  My pathway was really chosen for me: and I was a good Catholic girl on top of it.   When it was 1969 and the boomer world was exploding, I was not doing drugs or burning my bra.  I was planning a wedding as soon as I could afford it.      

 While I lived on the south side of Chicago, Hillary came from a northwest suburb, Park Ridge.  She had a hard-working father who did well in his own business.  Her mother was a stay-at-home mom.  She has two brothers as I do.  Neither one of us was born with a silver spoon in her mouth.  I married my high-school sweetheart, worked hard as a teacher, had children, went back to school to become a nurse, worked again.  I’m living a good life. 

Hillary is living an amazing life.  She was more than just moved by the death of Martin Luther King.  It shook her to the core.  In time it changed her political affiliation from Republican to Democrat and made her certain that she wanted to go on to law school—Yale Law School.     

I’m smart.  That’s always been my big thing—I am smart.  It gives me self-esteem.  It’s something to get up for in the morning.   I know who I am and what I do well—writing, medical research, parenting—so backing Hillary in her run for president of the United States was logical and true for me.  I believe so much in my own abilities, why wouldn’t I believe in another woman’s abilities to run this country. 

And if I am smart, Hillary is smarter.  That’s one of the reasons I showed up at the Drake Diner.  Out of all the candidates, Hillary was the most electable in my mind because of her smarts.  She is on it.  She gets the entire picture of things that go down.  People use their votes for different reasons: he’s from my state, he’s a lawyer, she went to high school with me, he is a born-again Christian.  After GWB, the only thing I thought we should be focusing on was to get someone in the oval office with brains.  We did that.  Barack Obama is extremely bright.  I love the guy.   

Hillary reminds me of my friend Carole Doris, who is also a lawyer.  Carole and I went to  Mundelein College, a school that no longer exists.  Many all-girls schools collapsed because of economics and because girls wanted a coed situation.  Mundelein was subsumed under Loyola University, the next door neighbor on the shore of Lake Michigan, the big school just waiting to take over the small one.     

Carole and I both majored in English and minored in education.  I would study six hours for our Victorian Lit test.  Carole would study two.  She’d get an A and I’d get a B.  Always.  I’m smart.  But Carole Doris is Hillary-smart.  She is now Chairman of the Metra Board in Chicago—that means she’s a big wig in transportation.  But Carole can tear up like Hillary and she cooks like a gourmet.  I saw a different side of her when she planned wedding showers the summer we both got married—1970.  She was all about making favors and playing party games.  I’m sure Hillary has spent time in the kitchen preparing food for a birthday party or a family dinner.  She says she’s familiar with the heat of the kitchen.  Hillary is a wife and a mother who doesn’t always have a chef with a big white hat working the stove.        

Hillary’s school, Wellesley, in Massachusetts, is still going strong, an all-girls school with a population of 2,318 students.  The school motto is: “Non Ministrari sed Ministrare” – “Not to be ministered unto, but to minister.”  How fortuitous.  In New Hampshire, was Hillary thinking of those words when she became emotional and talked about wanting to reverse what has happened in this country?   

Or was she worrying about her hair?  I can answer that—no. 

Hillary Rodham was all about course work and career and using her smarts.  Hillary Clinton is still that person.  If we had gone to school together, I might have spent some time with her talking about the spiral helix or the true meaning of Faulker’s THE BEAR, but I don’t think we would have been tight close friends.  My insecurities dictated some of the friend-moves I made.  In college I fought the battle of beauty versus brains.  The Mundelein was preparing materials to send out to high schools to lure young women to our programs.  Five girls were selected from my dorm for photographs.  Coming and going to class in my tattered raincoat or my one special Garland sweater, I saw them posing: on the college steps, sitting on the porch of the old library, reading in the lounge.  It made me sick.  These were the rich, well coiffed, well heeled girls who wore too much makeup.  They didn’t represent Mundelein as far as I was concerned.  The ones with the smarts did.  Like Carole.  Or maybe me.  But I was learning what pushes people’s buttons. 

Even as a junior in college with my 2.5 out of 3.00 and other activities I was trying to be the best on all fronts.  I was kind of obsessed.  I tried out for the college board.  In the sixties that didn’t mean I was going to be on a quiz show or that I would be honored at my college—it meant that I had a friend take my picture and I filled out a form that I picked up at the department store Caron Pirie Scott in downtown Chicago.  Carsons hired 100 female college students to work in the junior clothing departments at the downtown and suburban stores.  College board girls wore the same outfit and had their pictures up on the walls at the store. We were featured in an article in the newspaper.  What were we really?  Salesgirls.  But at that time of my life, being on the college board was huge.  When I was accepted I not only had a good summer job, but I had glamour and praise for my looks.  I hate admitting that.    

Hillary certainly did not work on the college board.  I imagine that her summer jobs dealt with social justice.  I know that after we graduated, in the summer of 1969, I worked for an agency that handled workman’s compensation.  I pulled cords on an old switchboard and typed up the information that members of the various unions had written done on their claim forms.  Where did the accident occur?  Answer: in the bedroom.  How did the accident occur?  The usual way.  These labor people needed to create a different form for women who were applying for aid because they were pregnant!!

While I was slowly learning that women were still on the sidelines in so many ways, Hillary was doing odd jobs as she traversed Alaska.  There wasn’t much social justice in washing dishes in the Mount McKinley Nation Park, but there was in the work she did at the processing cannery in Valdez.  When she blew the whistle on the awful working conditions, they fired her.  But they were shut down overnight also.  I don’t think Hillary was thinking about glamour.  Her consciousness was definitely raised.

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