Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Remaking the World with Words

Today, as you’ll be reminded any number of times and places to include here and now is Women’s Equality Day. It’s an observation marking the adoption in 1920 of the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, that stated simply and elegantly, “(t)he right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”

If you’re under forty it may be hard to imagine an atmosphere of bi-partisanship and attitude of cooperation that allowed and facilitated our House of Representatives and Senate to work in partnership with the President of the United States for the common good. It's hard to believe, I know, but at one time such collaboration was seen as desirable and the nation, as a whole, benefited 

I was much younger then and my memories have dimmed with time and distance, but we did do things together that today would be regarded as impossible to accomplish alone. Maybe that is what’s meant by the Good Old Days. For women of the United States, not just those born before 1920 and for many in every variation of socio-economic strata we have, there are no such as Good Old Days.

It never ceases to amaze me how a planet, which from space presents all of us upon it as looking so much the same, can be broken into so many synthetic divisions. Together, despite the insanity of our national, ideological or religious vanity, we are so much smarter and gooder* than we are separately that it defies logic why we continue to subjugate one another based on the color of skin, an accident of economic achievement, religious belief, genitalia and/or sexual preference.

You don’t have to send anyone a card to celebrate Women’s Equality Day-you just need to continue to strive to see individual persons as people, fellow travelers on the Big Blue Marble, orbiting the Sun, hanging on for dear life and each hoping we’re not flung to the far corners of the universe before our appointed time.
-bill kenny     

*it should be a word

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