Amazed and Bemused

Gratitude for the Right to Vote

2008-09-29T19:59:00.016-05:00

I never forward mass emails. Never. But recently my mother sent me a message that made me stop and think. Because of the sacrifices made by women in my (our) past, I have always been able to take my right to vote for granted. But the following brief story of what it took for me to have that right has made me feel deep gratitude for the struggles of those who have gone before me. I don't ever again want to be cavalier about my right to vote. And I want the story to be read by as many people as possible. If anyone knows who the original author is, please let me know. I like to give credit where it is due.

Here's the story:

WHY SHOULD WE VOTE?

Here's the story of our mothers and grandmothers who lived only 90 years ago.

Remember, it was not until 1920 that women were granted the right to go to the polls and vote.

The women who stood up for the right to vote were innocent and defenseless, but they were jailed nonetheless for picketing the White House, carrying signs asking for the right to vote.

(Lucy Burns)

And by the end of the night, they were barely alive. Forty prison guards wielding clubs and their warden's blessing went on a rampage against the 33 women wrongly convicted of "obstructing sidewalk traffic."

They beat Lucy Burns, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head, and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air.

(Dora Lewis)

They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed, and knocked her out cold. Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack.

Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting, and kicking the women.

Thus unfolded the "Night of Terror" on November 15, 1917, when the warden at Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket Woodrow Wilson's White House for the right to vote.

For weeks, the women's only water came from an open pail. Their food--all of it colorless slop--was infested with worms.

(Alice Paul)

When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat, and poured liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press.

. . . So, refresh my memory. Some of us women won't vote this year because. . . why, exactly? Because we have carpool duties? We have to get to work? Our vote doesn't matter? It's raining?

(Mrs. Pauline Adams in the prison garb she wore while serving a 60-day sentence)

Last week, I went to a sparsely attended screening of HBO's new movie Iron Jawed Angels. It is a graphic depiction of the battle these women waged so that I could pull the curtain at the polling booth and have my say. I am ashamed to say I needed the reminder.

(Miss Edith Ainge, of Jamestown, New York)

All these years later, voter registration is still my passion. But the actual act of voting had become less personal for me, more rote. Frankly, voting often felt more like an obligation than a privilege. Sometimes it was inconvenient.

(Berthe Arnold, CSU graduate)

My friend Wendy, who is my age and studied women's history, saw the HBO movie, too. When she stopped by my desk to talk about it, she looked angry. She was. With herself. "One thought kept coming back to me as I watched that movie," she said. "What would those women think of the way I use, or don't use, my right to vote? All of us take it for granted now, not just younger women, but those of us who did seek to learn." The right to vote, she said, had become valuable to her "all over again."

HBO released the movie on video and DVD. I wish all history, social studies, and government teachers would include the movie in their curriculum. I want it shown on Bunco night, too, and anywhere else women gather. I realize this isn't our usual idea of socializing, but we are not voting in the numbers we should be, and I think a little shock therapy is in order.

(Conferring over ratification [of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution] at [National Woman's Party] headquarters, Jackson Pl[ace] [Washington, D.C.]. L-R Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, Mrs. Abby Scott Baker, Anita Pollitzer, Alice Paul, Florence Boeckel, Mabel Vernon (standing right))

It is jarring to watch Woodrow Wilson and his cronies try to persuade a psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane so she could be permanently institutionalized. And it is inspiring to watch the doctor refuse. Alice Paul was strong, he said, and brave. That didn't make her crazy.

The doctor admonished the men, "Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity."

We need to get out and vote and use this right that was fought for so hard by these very courageous women. Whether you vote Democratic, Republican, or Independent, remember to vote.

(Helena Hill Weed, Norwalk, Conn. Serving 3-day sentence in D.C. prison for carrying banner,

"Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.")

History is being made.

Dinner!

2007-07-02T19:16:00.000-05:00

I sit in one of the puffy purple chairs in our bedroom looking over some notes. My little dog, Garcon, sleeps on his side next to me. He presses his back against my thigh as his tiny belly moves up and down, up and down. I don’t see how a sleeping little dog can press so hard against me in his sleep. Tiny hairs curl over the pinkness of his tummy flesh.

Across the room, my enormous dog, Cassidy, a bloodhound/Rottweiler mix, snores on his gross round pad that stinks like he does. When I start to move around, Cassidy stands up, does a gigantic downward dog stretch, and shakes his head. His floppy black ears slap back and forth against his head and his dog tags jingle with a flat metallic sound. At 10 years of age, this 106-pound pooch is an old man, and his routines are very important to him. “It’s 6:00. Time for dinner,” the high-pitched groan from the back of his throat announces. He rears up, and puppy-like, lifts his ridiculously large front paws into the air in gleeful anticipation of the grandest event of the evening.

Garcon, a Jack Russell terrier runt, whose head is the size of one of Cassidy’s paws, notices Cassidy’s cues and looks at me with intelligent-eyed anticipation, perking his perfectly triangular ears as high as they’ll go. I give in. I’m a sucker for the eager pleading of brown dog eyes, be they large or small.

I stand and squeal, “Is it time for . . . DINNER?!” Garcon comes to his feet, quivering with hope. Cassidy snuffles through folds of bloodhound-baggy face flesh and begins to prance. I love to get them riled up with excitement, so I say it again: “Is it time for . . . DINNER?!”

Garcon races in a blur to the top of the stairs. Cassidy, usually terrified of the ferocious terrier monster, forgets himself and barrels past Garcon, heading down the stairs. (Literally—his huge square skull almost drags him headfirst to a heap at the bottom of the stairs, claws clattering on the wood all the way down.) Garcon, tags jingling, gracefully zips behind Cassidy, and, bullet-dog-style, runs under Cassidy’s belly and beats him into the utility room. The ritual of doggy dinner has begun.

Much to my displeasure, Cassidy’s food bag sits on top of the dryer. We haven’t come up with a good solution for where to store his voluminous stash of food since an unfortunate bloody diarrhea incident last summer that resulted from storing his food in the Texas-hot garage. Both dogs pant with anxious hope as I pull open the corner of the Advanced Protection Senior dog food bag. The brown paper packaging crinkles as I dip the big 2 ½ cup measure into the dry brown “food.” I scoop up a hefty portion of marble-sized chunks, and set the cup of lustrous food pieces on the dryer.

I turn back toward the dogs to begin the only disciplined part of this routine. “Cassidy, sit!” I say as I point to the floor behind his rear. His baseball bat of a tail beats back and forth with such fiercely happy anticipation that it shakes his whole body, so it’s hard for him to settle into sitting. So I say it again, louder and more firmly this time. “Cassidy, sit!” He sighs loudly and sits, looking up at me as if to say, “See? I’m a good boy! Right?”

I turn to Garcon and give him the same command. He’s so much smaller that he can sit and shake his whole body at the same time, so he sits immediately. Plus, he’s the smarter animal. He knows that sitting, even though it’s beneath him, will get him his dinner.

“Stay,” I say and open the door to the garage. Slamming the door behind me, I step over the recycling bin and walk toward the garage refrigerator where Garcon’s food is stored in a reasonably sized bin in the freezer. This storage plan is also due to last summer’s ugly and perilous dog digestive incident.

Both dogs’ pitiful whining vibrates through the closed door as I open the freezer. Light pours out into the garage, along with cold smoke. I pull out the bin of diet adult dog food. (Garcon fights an ongoing battle with pudginess if he eats regular food.) I dip the ¼ cup measure into the frozen bits of “food” and grab a heaping cup full. I seal the bin’s lid, load it back into the dog-food-littered freezer, and head back into the house.

I open the door and the dogs’ control rips the seams of its limits. They leap up from their sitting position and prance around, rearing, whining, panting, twirling. It’s a mayhem that I love, and I egg them on, laughing.

Cassidy faces his dish, and again it’s “Cassidy, sit.” This time he eagerly obeys and sits right away, but every muscle in his body strains forward toward the gleaming dish. I dump his chunks-o-food into the stainless steel bowl with a clang. “Goooood boy. . . . Goooood boy.” He drools. “Okay!” I say and he commences chomping loudly.

I turn to Garcon. “Okay little buddy, here we go!” We feed them in separate rooms to avoid bloodshed during a simple meal, so he eagerly follows me to the kitchen. He stands alert with every sliver of intelligent awareness engaged as I open his drawer and pull out an empty wine bottle we use as a food puzzle.

I begin to load the cold brown chunks into the neck of the bottle. The hard pellets musically drop into the glass bottle, but of course some of them “accidentally” drop to the floor. Garcon expertly races from chunk to chunk, devouring each one in an instant.

Finally the bottle is fully loaded. “Garcon, sit.” He sits immediately, yet reluctantly, his eagerness replaces with disdain. “Fine,” I can see on his face. “I’ll play your stupid little game, but know that I’m only putting up with your nonsense so I can have my food.”

I set the bottle on the floor in front of him. He looks to me for the signal. “Okay,” I whisper, and he slaps the bottle with his front paw. The glass rings as it hits the floor.

I’d tell you about his hilarious way of eating, but that’s another story.

(Written May 25, 2007)