OnLine With Zoe

Is Electing a Woman for President a Revolutionary Act?

No matter if you are for Bernie or Hillary, the fact remains, many of us want to break this glass ceiling once and for all. Any woman less powerful, less formidable than Hillary could never do it. Let’s face it, young voters, liberal voters, occupy people, anti-wall street people don't even assign electing a woman as a stroke of revolution.

I read articles about how it is going to get nasty and, of course, it is. Jackie and his wife got death threats, Branch was vilified. Breaking barriers is the job of razor sharp ice cutters who can bust convention with a smile on their face.

Men are working day and night to stop the this particular ceiling being broken. Many don’t even realize it. It is a fundamental thread in the woof and warp of their lives. Possibly the thought gets diffused before it is fully formed. The mind wanders looking for reasons to never let a woman lead the USA. Women just got the right to be Rangers. A woman boxer, football coach, pilot. It is a slo-jam, very slow. The holding down of rising women is in all of our DNA. ALL OF US.

All you need do is watch Gloria Borger (CNN) and Andrea Mitchell (MSNBC) to bring this into strong relief. They blatantly diminish Hillary. They do it with entitlement, as if it advances them. It is the patriarchal position to dissect and eviscerate a woman in all respects at all times, without apology; without any thought.  

For many years I have asked where are the women? Thich Nhat Hahn’s partner is a woman. Harvey Milk’s debate partner was a woman. When we looked at photos of Arab Spring, we looked for women. Katherine Luther, Lydia Emerson, Mary Cassatt, Frida Kahlo, Frances Perkins, Coretta Scott, Grace Hopper. Look behind, look beyond the poster presentation and you will find a woman. It is the looking that is revolutionary.

Electing a woman who puts women first is the most revolutionary act for me. (Carly is an extension of the patriarchy.) It will unfold a whole new helix of thinking. Books, studies, articles have been written and published that identify what happens when there is a preponderance of woman in leadership. The entire mindset will change, FOREVER. That is a revolution.

My feminism has informed me for over 40 years. I have tested it, torn it apart and put it back together again.  I have broken convention with risk, with relentless application, with moderates shouting in my face.  I have been mystified about this great divide over the democratic candidates. At this moment it appears to me that these two camps want revolution, the disagreement is that most do not think voting for a woman is revolutionary.

So Long Pow Wow.

 I really did not mean to wait for the month that the show closes to post a review.  It was more that I have been really busy.  Now that the close has been announced, October 25, I feel pressed to make this happen. 

The first Long Beach City Council meeting I went to since I moved had an enthusiastic announcement about a mural show, POW WOW.  Certainly I cannot be the only person who thought it was going to be by, for and about Native Americans. 

They had my full attention.  My Potawatomi ancestry is important to me and I would support this city wide installation.  I had read that Long Beach is the second most diverse city in the country.  Opening day I drove to the central office, picked up a program and took off to drive to all nine sites. 

Not necessarily obvious in a non-binary state of mind but the documentation suggests there are 3 women among fifteen artists.  Again, though not definitive, there was not a preponderance of Native or Indigenous artists.  I feel confident in saying that the art was not bringing Native consciousness to the city. 

I suppose this all leads to one very surprising conclusion, the title was appropriated and, as such, was not acknowledged.  

Moving on to the primary and housed mural show, I went to the Long Beach Museum of Art.  Several months before, I had made a visit.  I had asked the docent if there were any works by women on view at the museum.  She told me that she didn’t know.  Using only names, which is not very reliable, my friend and I found one.  But I held great hope for Vitality and Verve: Transforming the Urban Landscape, the new show. 

Again, not certain evidence, of the twenty artists, a few are women.  Some of the names are gender neutral but lets roll with 15%.  (which I think is high).  I leave it to you, Aaron Horkey, Alex Yanes, Andrew Schoultz, Audrey Kawasaki, Brendan Monroe, Brandon Shigeta, Cryptik, Esao Andrews, Greg ‘Craola’ Simkins, Hot Tea, James Bullough, Jeff Soto, John S. Culqui, Low Bros, Meggs, Nosego, Nychos, Saber, and Tristan Eaton.

No matter the artists broken down into binary genders, a serious cultural goal with some, heretofore, resolutions unclear, let the work speak for itself.  Where are the women?  Where are the WELL women?  Where are women with clothes on ?  Or women not cut into parts lining one of the largest walls. 

The first woman is floating in pale lime green and too thin to carry a feather.  Message received.  Looking to the far wall, there is a woman in her underwear, lying on a sheet,  cut into dozens of pieces.  One repeating gash severing her head.  Trust me this is about as good as it gets.  Turning the few corners in the show, it did not get any more womanly.  Nothing fecund, well, wholesome, seasonal, celestial. 

I have to admit, I have been taught by the best; The Guerrilla Girls ~ both Guerilla Girls On Tour and Guerrilla Girls, Inc.  It is really quite simple: where are the women, in the art and artists?  Are they naked and tortured?  Are they well and valuable beyond being a sex object.  

 

The show is going to close October 25.  Interesting that LBMA’s latest email includes an annoucement about a new acquisition, Salmon Stripe by Gail Factor which will be on view November 19.  Others in the Oceanview Gallery will include works by Thelma deGoede Smith, Helen Lundeberg, Judy Chan, Karena Massengill, Mylene Raiche, and Joan Austin.  I am looking forward to seeing it.

But, really, Pow Wow??  Really?

Suffragettes ~ Truth or Dare

I was invited to a private sneak peek of the movie, Suffragette.  On the invitation was a request to not write about it until it had premiered which it did last night at the Telluride Film Festival.  The British press had been writing about it and now the US press is at liberty to as well.  It is a marketing thing about film festivals and who gets to print first.  I find it all commercially understandable but not my concern at all.  My concern was, is and will always be -- historical accuracy.  For the rest of time certain fictionalized movies are shown in classrooms as if they are a history lesson and thus the myths are spun and truth is unseated: my personal annoyance.   With that said, I went to this preview with a chip on my shoulder or, in my mind, prepared to hold feet to the fire. 

My host had asked me to not be rude if the film veers entirely off track.  She thought I might confront the director and screenwriter who were offering a Q&A after.  Fortunately the opening frame set the story in 1912 which means that Alice Paul has left England for America and no matter what happens I will not have to leap to the front of the room and set them straight on Miss Paul.  It was a secret relief. 

Oddly the opening scene is Maud Watts, played by Carrie Mulligan, staring into a shop window, as was the opening scene in Iron Jawed Angels.  That set me on high alert.  Maud is a laundry worker, wife and mother.  She has suffered burns, long hours and sexual assault.  She has aged out of being assaulted and now the foreman has a younger conquest.  Fundamentally she lives like most women; trying to get through the day with the least amount of friction, falling into bed from exhaustion and, tomorrow, starting all over again.  It isn’t that she doesn’t have a voice.  It is that her voice has been silenced to such a point that Maud herself accepts she is unable to speak.

Mrs. Pankhurst, the genius strategist, beloved leader and hunted change-maker gave thousands of women the means to find their voice.  She trusted that these exhausted women knew precisely what was going on, they simply had to find the means and opportunity to express it.  Marches, songs, publicly wearing the movement’s colors, selling movement papers on street corners and being visible pierced society’s convention.  They saw one another, heard one another and could be silent no more. 

The film Suffragette features two women’s delicately structured evolution into full active, sometimes shocking, militancy.  The laundry worker and a pharmacist carry on in the neighborhoods of London you might recognize from Calling The Midwife.  Nappies on the clothesline crisscross the streets, hats on every head, children sitting in prams unattended, the streets of the workers giving it their all to simply carry on. 

The film is intimate, heartbreaking, every woman’s story.  Patriarchy is at its full roar and women are crashing through like Boudicca with her daughters riding against the Romans.  Once awake they cannot turn away escalating violence all the way to the death.  All for that precious vote.  That vote doled out in increments and still not used to its full potential. 

The vagueness about the movie in this writing is intentional for two reasons; not wanting give away any surprises and to address what is more to my preferred question -- was it a blathering fairy tale forever diminishing a brave noble story of our lineage as women. 

My real jubilation happened in the Q&A with Sarah Gavron, the director and Abi Morgan, the screenwriter.  The first question from the audience was what was their process in authenticating the story.  Gavron said that, unlike American bio-dramas, the British are very serious about accuracy.   (I did want to jump up with that!)  She said it took nine years and each time something more was discovered, they rewrote and, sometimes, re-shot.  Morgan said they went through 43 rewrites.  In the course of six years they had consulted with Dr. Helen Pankhurst, granddaughter of Sylvia Pankhurst and Katherine Tupper, great granddaughter of Emily Davison. They had access to the British Museum and Parliament archives  They read memoirs by the laundry workers.  Carrie Mulligan read handwritten diaries of women who led lives like the one she played.  The role of Edith Ellyn, played by Helena Bottom Carter, was based on the real woman, Olive Schreiner who had wanted to be a doctor but could not afford the training. 

For me, it was important that Sarah Gavron and Abi Morgan did not take the easy road and draw un-provable conclusions in the film about the death of Emily Wilding Davison.  They acknowledged that Emily’s death is and will always be unsettled business; was she a martyr or on the edge of suicide?   They described they were given access to her tiny purse and inside was a return ticket, possibly alluding that she did not mean to be killed.  Watching films, listening to scholars and relatives it seems it will always be a great conversation.  Even a recent television recreation puts forth a digital supposition that she only wanted to place a VOTES FOR WOMEN sash on the King’s horse.   Dr. Diane Atkinson, author of the book, Suffragette says, “Don’t fall for this return ticket business.  It is a red herring.  I am very sure she was ready to give her life.”  The mystery is a never ending conversation. 

And we need all the bait for conversations we can find.  As Gavron said, “We need to resurrect women from history.”  Indeed we do.  Thank you Sarah Gavron and Abi Morgan.  Well done. 

A Tile in the Mosaic of Equality

In the streets of Chicago, 1968 I was directed by the methods and success of Gandhi.  I had read about him for years and presumed that his theories were inspiring the American Civil Rights Movement.  I grew up in devotion to the left wing of the Catholic Church, the hope of Vatican II and John XXIII.  My feminism was not really ignited yet.  In fact, I did not notice on my 15^th birthday, August 28, 1963, that no woman spoke from the podium at the Lincoln Memorial when Dr King told us of his dream. 

Many years later I heard some vague story about a woman who had led a hunger strike in jail campaigning for women’s suffrage.  At the time all I knew was Seneca, Stanton and Anthony.  Then through no direct line of influence, I found myself fasting for the Equal Rights Amendment and again I heard this woman’s name, Alice Paul.  She was the principle and most acknowledged author of the legislature.   My interested was piqued. 

Thirty-four years later, I have culled the universe for any and all information about and by Miss Paul.  I have read every book available, interviewed many people who both knew and worked for her.  I have pestered a historian friend for hundreds of articles.  I have learned to judge a book by its footnotes and to read in complete quiet.  I have been told I know more about Miss Paul than anyone.  I know her virtues, her many faults and, with humility, find me more like her with each revelation.  I have been given the honorific of Independent Scholar. 

Over the last few years one glaring truth has pierced my feminist heart.  Would it be different if I had known the first to practice Nonviolent Direct Action was a feminist woman?  Would it have different to know that the first to organize a march on the White House was a woman?  Why did my shelves have dozens of books on Gandhi’s theories and methods with application to the American Social Justice Movement and ZERO on Alice Paul’s?  Why had I read Indian Opinion and Harijan but not the Suffragist?  Why didn’t I know that both Miss Paul and M.K. Gandhi had been at suffrage rallies, spoken with Mrs Pankhurst and both left with objections to the introduction of violence.

I am devoted, I am dedicated to introduce Americans to their very own founder of Non Violent Direct Action, Miss Alice Paul.  I believe that knowing about Alice, her methods and her lifelong activism will inspire and light the way.  I base this on my own 50 years in activism.  I see how she never gave up.  She rested and moved with the ebb and flow of equality.  She did not party with the signing of the Nineteenth Amendment.  She went on to earn three law degrees to prepare for the campaign for constitutional equality.  The vote was just one tile in the mosaic of equality.   On her 92nd birthday, she spent her happy birthday phone call with First Lady Betty Ford promoting the ERA. 

We are left with a spectacular film by Sir Richard Attenborough on the life of Gandhi in which meticulous care was given to truth.  Entire scenes were recreated, dialog was taken from real life.  We need accessible accurate media to learned about, celebrate and fulfill the plans of Miss Alice Paul.  We will be better people to end the national practice of letting women age into obscurity and dismissing their legacy.  Her work of constitutional equality is now our work.

I hope you will trust me with creating a national, culturally illumined, campaign to build awareness of the infinite relevance of militant activist, Alice Paul.  There is a call for seed money on Kickstarter.  (click here) Your donation will be your tile in this particular mosaic for equality.  The goal is $9,200 which is $100 for each year of her life.  This amount is the foundation.  Once launched we will be creating both self-sustaining funding and sponsorship.  Thank you for joining this effort.  You can read about the objectives, vision and mission here.

Oscars and Pie

Is it too soon to move from re-act to retro-spect?  I have to admit most of my insights occur in a rearview mirror but the optimal distance is usually more than a couple of weeks.  It can take years to collect succinct or defensible responses.  Nonetheless, I am going to risk it today, show my hand and hope for the best. 

If you are a feminist or interested in feminism, Oscar night 2015 was volatile, exciting, best water cooler talk in a long time. That said, it begs the question what did it mean to everyone else?

In the pie chart of American women, I live in the red slice.  Most of the people I know live in the red slice.  We are cool.  We are hot.  We are hip.  We have read Freire, Alinsky, hooks, Hill Collins, Crenshaw.  We tweet and post and follow Laurie Penny, Amanda Levitt, Roxane Gay, Ultraviolet, A is For, and hundreds of peeps or orgs who agree with us.  We retweet and use hashtags (though not as effectively as ISIS).  We work on checking our isms, our privilege, our ever-widening inclusion and our revulsion over inner circle royalty.  We are pro plus sizes, support public breast feeding and fight like hell to come out ~ as queer, having an abortion, in recovery.  We do all we can to protest inequality, demand justice and stand in solidarity.  It’s a lot but it’s who we are. 

Once a week or less I shop at a big neighborhood grocery store.  In twelve years, my favorite checker, Sue always asks me the same two questions.  “How’s Grace?”  She’s fine.  “What did you do this weekend?”  One weekend I told her about going to Dallas.  I hosted an ERA Café Conversation and Gloria Steinem was at the same table.  I asked her if she knew who Gloria Steinem was.  “No, who is she?”  I asked if she had heard of Ms. Magazine.  “No.”  I asked if she knew what the ERA is.  “No, What is it?”  But you can be sure my checker knew what fair wages means. 

Sue has no idea what is intersectionality or white privilege or why immigration is a family issue.  She does not know what the old Jim Crow is about, let alone the new Jim Crow.  She knows about a zillion morphing prices for as many products on hundreds of shelves on dozens of aisles.  She knows the mad hours she and her husband work to keep their children, grandchildren and dog, Emmie safe and well.  She knows her feet hurt and retirement is many years off. 

Sue is not in the red section of the pie chart.  She doesn’t know that there is a matrix of domination, an inseparable intersection of all oppressions, a few men own dam near everything, black water is coming out of California faucets and abortion rights are the lynchpin of female autonomy.  She doesn’t know that I live and love in the red section of the pie chart.  She doesn’t know about the chart, the pie or the red slice.

Sue didn’t see Boyhood.  She has no idea who the Arquette Family is but she did see the Oscars.  She saw a best actress winner say something about her own life; about equal wages.  She saw a woman over 40, in a nice, relatively kind of plain dress, wearing glasses, talk about her life.  She saw women in the audience leap to their feet in support.  I am certain Sue knows they are all rich beyond belief.  They have more money than they could ever need and she saw one of them spent her sliver of time to talk about equal wages.  And, now she knows that even among well paid Americans, men and women are paid unequally. 

Sue doesn’t know what was said backstage, about the call for Gays and Blacks to back the fair wage movement.  The phrase, Equal means Equal is all new.  It was an outrage to those who live in the red slice.  It was a slap in the face for all those who work in the red slice.  It set the social justice movement back decades as tweeted and posted by the red slice residents.  But that night, someone at the Oscars said, women should be paid equally.  And that’s enough for Sue.  And I am grateful to Patricia because Sue’s feet hurt and she rings up my groceries and always asks, “How’s Grace?” 

I love writing, thinking and living in the red slice.  It is home to me.  And one of my concerns is full equality for all the pie people.  I want fair wages and don’t need everyone to convert to the red slice.  Forgive me if I don’t say it well.  I know better. 

 

What is the Question, Ms. Cyrus?

It took me a long time to sort out my thoughts, or maybe wait for better ones on the VMA, Wrecking Ball public floggings of Miley Cyrus.  I woke up thinking about it and asking, what is the real question here.  I read and read and I have not found a real question.  If this is all industry hype then it has nothing to do with me and most of you.  However with all the hoopla, I considered this may be a true question.

How does anyone transition from child to adult?  How does anyone strike their own ground and plant their flag?  How did I?  How did you?  Some of us did it very young, like children of addicts.  Some of us never do.  But it seems to me that most of us did something, a series of things to stop being a referential, controlled person to taking control.  Some with grace, some with ire, some in secret, some out loud, and some with great pain. 

There are so many icons to compare this to; Prince Hal to Louise in Gypsy and even Jesus of Nazareth on the train, taking off on his own with his mother freaking out. 

Maybe one wants to say that doing it in public is a special kind of problem but those of us who have not had an easy go of it would disagree.  Escaping domination, establishing one’s self as chief in command, and doing it with intelligence is never easy. My issue with the VMA performance is not that Miley wanted to sound the death knell to all references to Hannah, it is that she didn’t accomplish that goal. 

How do you age out of adolescence is not clothes, not sex, not shock; you behave your way out of it.  Twerking, licking, sticking one’s tongue out, grinding on Beetlejuice while he sings about disrespecting consent, is not going to get you what you actually want, Ms. Cyrus.  If you want society to believe you are an independently thinking adult, then you have to keep behaving like one and we will get the message. It is how these people did it.   Some more successfully than others, but this is not a new or one-of-a-kind situation. 

Who could have been more controlled than Janet Jackson?  Little sidekick to the King of Pop.  I got up today and played her album, Control.  The stage is filled with men, her dancing is mega sexual and, yet, she is making it clear ~ with her new apartment key on her earring ~ SHE IS IN CONTOL.  

Aunt Mattie is at the Train Station

I am not one who steps away from a taboo.  Actually, I often search for the taboo and let it rip.  Certainly around gender, age and religion, I have no hesitation.  But here is one that makes me think more than twice ~ Mother’s Day.  It is holy, guarded, anointed.  It has been untouchable for most, with the brave exception of Anne Lemott. She says a mouthful and survived.  Maybe I will too.

Personally, my role models were spectacular.  My biological mother was not any good at mothering whatsoever.  I have written about that enough.  But in that abyss, I turned to saints, goddesses, authors, activists.  I have no shortage of astounding women to thank.  I hope I am more like many of them than my bio-mom.

My gripe is that in all the hoopla about Mother’s Day, there is the equal and opposite action of diminishing the single woman, the child-free woman, the spinster.  It is not only within the family.  Not only is it in the maitre d’, “table for one?”  Not only is it in the greeting card aisle organized by relationship. 

It is in the eyes of people who assume it is a failed dream.  It is in the Father of the Bride, as Spencer Tracy forgetting to pick up the “maiden” Aunt Mattie at the train station.  It is in the actuarial tables.  It is in the neighborhood architecture.  And it is in the voice of those who have children and assume their life is infinitely more complex and time more precious. 

When is the day we honor those women who knew they were not meant to have children and made sure it did not happen?  When is the day to honor child-free women who are expected to have more time for the fundraiser, the phone bank, the event.   As Anne Lemott says, “But Mother’s Day celebrates a huge lie about the value of women: that mothers  are superior beings, that they have done more with their lives and chosen a more difficult path.”  Somehow it is implied that time is a rare commodity for mothers and is dirt cheap for non-mothers.

Already I am cringing.  Already I am assuming readers’ responses.  Usually such a thing emboldens me but in this one case it cautions me.  Be tempered.  Be careful.  Be diplomatic.  There is nothing so absolved from attack as motherhood.  We paint it, we celebrate it, we sanctify it.  Seems dangerous to examine it.  Even Anne Lamott made sure to mention she is a mother, somehow it mitigated the danger. 

Miss Paul and the 113th Congress

If you divided the entire country into people who know the ERA is in play and those who do not, it would be two very uneven groups.  And within the group who knows it is and has always been in play you can find a tenacious sub-group who are half crazy from telling people that it 1) did not pass and 2) it is always, ALWAYS, introduced into Congress.  ALWAYS.  It is surprising that I have not lost my mind answering that in these many years, since 1972 when Nixon signed it. 

Every Congress for decades has introduced the standard ERA, however modern day editions do not include any deadline.  March 5, 2013, Senator Menendez (D-NJ) introduced it into the 113th Congress; S.J. Res. 10.  The concern associated with this version is that setting the process back to zero, even without a deadline, could be a net loss as some of the original ratified states may not ratify now.  To bypass that danger, there is a new effort to simply remove the deadline from the 1972 bill.  Therefore the 35 ratified states would not be able to rescind, requiring only three more states to ratify and seal the deal. 

You can argue all day about half a dozen serious unknowns.  Believe me I know them all and have spent a lot of time over the last 30 years ruminating about it.  I have found smart people on both sides of each strategy.  In fact, it is the disagreement that has made me step away from the heated debate.  Fact is no one knows if the deadline is constitutional or if removing the deadline is constitutional.  No one will know until something happens, until the deadlock is broken and there is some motion in some direction.  It will have to be tested one way or another. 

Here is what I do know for sure:

• There is absolutely no reason to work to stop either strategy.  I have refused to spend a single second arguing against either strategy.
• Any conversation on the ERA passing is time well spent.
• Until the deadline is removed or the start over is in play, the 15 non-ratified states are in a stalemate.  The last 30 years have validated that.  There is no reason for one of the 15 to make a move before the move has any possible application.
• Any and all speculation on how the ERA would be applied once ratified is total waste of time.  No one knows.  What we do know is that the 14th Amendment is not the guarantee the United States needs for constitutional equality.  

Here is what I believe:

• The US Constitution is a dynamic document that determines the destiny of the people, the country, and, in some ways, the world.  It is fundamentally incomplete and always will be until all genders are explicitly included.
• It does not matter which strategy gets this done.  After one of the most painful nights of my life, several years ago, I came to the conclusion ~ ALL HANDS ON DECK.  Support them BOTH and settle for no loss.  NO LOSS. 

This last December I began one of my marathon inquiries.  I decided to find Miss Alice Paul*.  I turned off the TV and radio.  I put aside all other interests.  I read around 30 books, 50 articles and interviewed six women who knew Miss Paul for varying amounts of time. 

Here are two pertinent astounding things I discovered:

First, Miss Paul was not called to testify at the ERA hearings in the 92nd Congress.  She asked the women who did testify to come to her home for a talk.  They arrived with an idea that she would be pleased and grateful.  In fact, she was furious.  Miss Paul knew that 1972 H.J. Res 208’s inclusion of a deadline was certain death for the 24 words she had labored over for close to 50 years.  She told the misguided young testifiers that now, with the deadline, the anti-ERA people had to stall the process in only one state to stop it DOA and, as history confirmed, she was right.   I was beside myself when told this story.  I asked emphatically, Why did you not include Miss Paul?  Why didn’t you heed her concerns?!  And she said they thought she was just an old lady who didn’t understand the great victory of passing H.J. Res 208.  On the phone that day in January 2013 two women cried.  Both of us older women now, we know the young ignorance and tragedy of ageism.  Miss Paul knew everything but she was, “just an old lady in a chair.”  In fact, Miss Paul was so upset and knew it had no chance of passing with the attached deadline, she did not accept the invitation to join in at the signing. 

Second, Miss Paul, with three law degrees, did not know how the ERA would impact the law.  She did not waste a precious moment on speculation or even on trying to control it.  From her interview with Miss Amelia Fry, Miss Paul said, “I think if we get freedom for women, then they are probably going to do a lot of things that I wish they wouldn’t do, but it seems to me that isn’t our business to say what they should do with it.  It is our business to see that they are free.”

I feel confident that Miss Paul would be very happy that Senator Cardin (D-MD) and Senator Kirk (R-IL) are going to introduce a bill into the 113th Congress to remove the deadline.  I also feel she would never waste a moment speculating on the interpretation of the amendment.  All Miss Paul would want is for 38 states to ratify the ERA and the United State Constitution to explicitly state, Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex. 

As she so famously said, “There is nothing complicated about Equality.”

*in my reading and interviews I came to know that her preference was to be addressed as Miss Paul.                      

The Self Interview Unchained

I am not a fan of chain mail, email, posts.  I don’t respond in five minutes with six people I want to hug or send angels to rescue.  I don’t want to tell you my last meal choice, the one word to describe you or post what ten words I would say if you called for bail.  But ask me about writing, about my books, about “Intellectual Activism” in the words of Patricia Hill Collins and I will clear my desk. 

This fine morning Shannon Drury, The Radical Housewife, included me in a facebook post.  She had been enlisted by Sonya Huber, who asked about The Next Big Thing.   Sonya says, “Basically, I get to answer these questions and then tag five writers who I think are the Next Big Thing. Very cool!”  I concur.

What is the title of your book? 
The Engaged Heart ~ An Activist’s Life. 

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
How did I get from there to here? 

What genre does your book fall under?
Political Memoir
(I want to use Lerner’s phrase, Political Autobiography but Frey robbed us all of using the word autobiography and, frankly, memoir leaves a lot more latitude) 

Where did the idea come from for the book?
My practice is Engaged Buddhism.  I think the best way to talk about it is through the demonstration of a life.  I hope that my life, my story, my passion, as manifest in my political activism, will inspire, inform and possibly ignite a few activists who just cannot stop.  No, you can’t when it is your calling.  Lucky you.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?
Microsoft Word took care of that, 1,410 hours at the keyboard and about the same amount of time sorting through my life.  I looked at every photo, every document, every Filofax 1985 – 2012 and all 515 blogs I had written over the last 14 years.  I made a 25 page-  two column outline of events of my life and then began to color outside the lines, off the page and on the walls. 
The most interesting thing was watching the events stream by like cars in a train, passing through some type of selection machine, awarding or discarding importance.  At 64 I was constantly surprised with what was significant and what was entirely forgettable.  Many things  I thought valuable deserved no remark and were flicked away forever.  Like sorting the attic, I organized my life.  It was industrial strength roto-rooter self-discovery.  I highly recommend it.     

Who or what inspired you to write this book? 
Doris Stevens, Lillian Hellman, Beatrix Potter, M.K.Gandhi, Paulo Friere, so many, so many.  But more honestly the answer is the tragedy, the broken heartedness of wanting to read a person’s own life story to find there is none.  What did SHE think about this or that.  How did She manage that disappointment?  Where did SHE find the courage to continue when nothing was working?  How did SHE not give up? 
The most incendiary thing for me was the movie, Iron Jawed Angels.  How could anyone represent Alice Paul as such an insipid fool?  And the movie, Milk which portrays Harvey as a single faceted human being when he was infinitely more.  The true story is always so much better than some watered down, product-placed piece of cheery fiction.  I don’t want to see the newly released acclaimed Lincoln once I read that the Black characters are slivers of their true selves. 
I want to know that Alice hid a copy of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poetry in her skirt when taken to jail and threw it at a window in the suffocating dining hall for a bit of air.  What was to be gained in showing her throwing a shoe as done in the movie.  Why invent a boyfriend?  Was Hollywood so unable to make a movie about a woman without a boyfriend?  Where is your political memoir, Alice?    

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
In 2001 I submitted my book about fasting for the ratification of the ERA.  I have a file of 28 rejection letters which all say the same thing, Dear Ms. Nicholson, Thank you for all you have done for the ERA and this wonderful book.  We could not sell a book on feminism in the current market.  Wish you all the best.  I did what I always do, what I like a lot about me – I did it myself.  I learned all I could about the professional production of books and started my own publishing company, Lune Soleil Press.  LSP is publishing The Engaged Heart. 

What other works would you compare this book to within your genre?  (I would amend this to say books that inspire)
Fireweed, A Political Autobiography
My Experiments with Truth
Autobiography of a Yogi
The Sun at Midnight
Cave in the Snow

What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?
I would so prefer a documentary, like the Times of Harvey Milk or Last Call at Maud’s.  But if I had to choose, it would be Rosie O’Donnell.  Maybe she could gain some weight for the role. 

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
The provenance of change is what consumes me.  How does it occur?   What pushes it forward and why does it stall or reverse?  Since change occurs from the inside out, the only way to see how it happens is to look inside.  I have dug deeply, told the truth and never opted to sweeten a telling. The goal was to excavate how a mind and heart change. 

Who or What are your Next Big Things?  
Wilder than any rollercoaster – I am a wreck waiting for it to come out.  I handed my pdf off to the designer, finished a successful Kickstarter campaign to finance it and contacted my printer.  Readers, reviews, who’s pissed because I did or did not talk about them.  Yikes! February it will be out in paper.  It is currently available in Kindle.

Now I am working on a new presentation, The Provenance of Change.  We need to understand change and consciously join with it.  Reproductive Autonomy, Full Federal Equality, Gender Equity and political representation = change at the speed of light rushing through the intergalactic Wi-Fi.  What a time to be alive. 

YOU - you are the next big thing.  What are you going to do now?  I want to see and cheer.  What is going to happen to women who want full access to political process?  What is going to happen as LGBT are visible in all segments of society?  What is the oppressor going to do as the oppressed are finding one another and uniting to say, ENOUGH is ENOUGH?  YOU are the Next big and best thing! 

Kickstarter Campaign to take The Engaged Heart to Print

Writing for a year, actually 1,410 hours, my 4th book is done.  Over 500 pages with 120+ pictures, The Engaged Heart is my whole life memoir.

When I started, I thought I would write it and offer it only on kindle.  The Hungry Heart and The Passionate Heart are available on kindle now. 

Then people started asking for a signed paper edition of the new one. They said they wanted to hold it, write in the margins, stuff it in a suitcase. 

I don't have the money for my designer to format for print (very different from kindle), a big print run or storage.  I investigated a bit and found out that my printer, Worzalla, offers both Print on Demand and recycled paper.  I can order in small affordable increments and will not have the problem of climate-controlled storage. 

Watching campaigns on kickstarter inspired me to give it a go.  With quotes from both my graphic designer and printer, $4,000 would assure The Engaged Heart would go to print.  I hope you will consider becoming a backer.  There are lots of rewards; signed books, postcards, movie screenings. 

Maybe you don't know what kickstarter is.  It is a collective funder which vets a project, posts serious ones, and only pays out if the goal is met.  In fact, if the goal not met, no one is charged for their pledge.  Stop by, pick out a reward and make a pledge. 

This is a wild ride but I already made my commitment.  Seems I made it a long time ago!  Thanks for pitching in and being a part of this latest adventure.