A New American Dream
By admin | March 23, 2008
In March 2007, the Washington Post printed an article entitled, “New Drive Afoot to Pass Equal Rights Amendment.” The paper reported that Phyllis Schlafly, who successfully led the movement to prevent the ERA’s passage in the 1970s, has resumed her battle cry.
It is no secret that men and women are not treated the same, nor valued in the same ways, in American society, and in the world. In the words of George Orwell in his 1945 book Animal Farm: “All animals are created equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” In Orwell’s book, the pigs kept rewriting the laws to benefit themselves at others’ expense. On August 27, 1974, activist attorney Florence Kennedy denounced Phyllis Schlafly on CBS radio in Miami as a “pigocrat,” an advocate for maintaining “privileges” rooted in unequal treatment. Kennedy said Schlafly was not rational, and should be slapped rather than argued with. Read the rest of this entry »
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Listen to the Music that is There
By admin | March 15, 2008
Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast,” wrote Englishman William Congreve in his play, The Mourning Bride, in 1697. What if, in our daily lives and interactions, we could express ourselves, and receive others, with the same attention and power that music affords?
In the summer of 2006, I participated in a 9-day intensive training in Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication, a way of using language to better identify and express feelings and needs. In the evenings after the days’ training, some of us attendees gathered in a courtyard between the dorms on the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque campus where the intensive was held that year. We sang, chanted, and socialized, enjoying the unstructured evenings.
One night, I was outside with my guitar, and a young woman joined me and started to sing. As the evening went on, more people joined us and we all sang whatever songs we knew, taking turns playing the guitar and introducing songs. At the end of the evening, without naming it as a plan, one by one, each of us walked away to our respective rooms, still singing our part in what became the final song of the evening. I was ecstatic! We were living a musical! Read the rest of this entry »
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