Once Upon a Time . . .

B.C., before Covid, before 9/11, There was an "American Dream"narrative many believed. That dream followed Americans from childhood all the way through adulthood then well into the "Golden Years." We lived on a consistent message that these United States of America held a certain promise that was guaranteed by the words written into the U.S. Constitution before we were born. Before now, we took that promise for granted, assuming it would stand the test of time for all time, or at the very least, for our own lifetime! Think again, my fellow Americans.

In 2016, on a frigid, snowy Sunday morning in an historic, New England church where many sermons and hymns had been sung before, a retired minister stood up unapologetically to say that although it had not been his practice to speak politically from the pulpit, this day he knew he had to. He was about to send up a warning flare like the night the Titanic did so. In vain.

In the 1960's, his mother had been an activist, he said. She had spoken up and worked against those who tried to oppress all others who belonged to the "protected" classes* under the Constitution. She had taught her son to speak up and that brought him to where he was standing on this day before a small congregation in one of the poorest, most depressed cities in the State of Massachusetts. He told us that when his mother passed away, he discovered a full dossier of her activism assembled by the FBI. He, too, as a young man had been documented for his affiliations with his mother! That didn't stop either one of them from speaking up, out, and outloud about the injustices many Americans suffered on a daily basis.

Their words and actions, along with many others, were instrumental in making it possible for everyone to vote, regardles; making it possible for women to receive safe, legal reproductive health care in their own community; making it possible to find asylum from brutal dictators elsewhere; making it possible to become an educated citizen through local schools; making it possible to breathe clean air and drink safe water; making it possible to attend synagogue or mosque or church without fear. This was the short list of possibilities that the minister juxtaposed against the long list of Presidential candidates that Spring in 2016. Then, this retired minister living out his Golden Years, spoke like a prophet that morning:

"We thought we had addressed and resolved many of the wrongs. We were the ones who were wrong! All the hatred, all the prejudice, all the evil, had just gone into a Pandora's Box. Now, in 2016, someone has the key and is about to open it in the next four years."

In 2023, we can attest to those prophetic words having been written into our American story. We American citizens must face this truth head on before it's too late. Too late for what? To late to speak freely, to write freely, to read freely (almost too late already), and to vote freely, which is becoming as precarious as in dictatorships that so many people flee against all odds. Is this the ending we want to write?

In 2024 . . . If we do not wish our story of a free democracy to come to an end, we must, each of us, act now, speak up now, against that very real and very present danger against OUR Democracy.

In the end, Pandora did open that box and unleashed all that was evil on an innocent world. But, the preacher told us not to forget that inside the box, there was also Hope!

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*www.eeoc.gov race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, sexual orientation, or gender identity), national origin, age (40 or older), disability and genetic information (including family medical history).

Danger, Danger!!!

An expert in authoritarian regimes, Sarah Kendzior captures the danger like this:  

Authoritarianism is not merely a matter of state control, it is something that eats away at who you are. It makes you afraid, and fear can make you cruel. It compels you to conform and to comply and accept things that you would never accept, to do things you never thought you would do.  

Authoritarian regimes, she says,  

… can take everything from you in material terms—your house, your job, your ability to speak and move freely. They cannot take away who you truly are. They can never truly know you, and that is your power. But to protect and wield this power, you need to know yourself—right now, before their methods permeate, before you accept the obscene and unthinkable as normal.   

We are heading into dark times, and you need to be your own light. Do not accept brutality and cruelty as normal even if it is sanctioned. Protect the vulnerable and encourage the afraid. If you are brave, stand up for others. If you cannot be brave—and it is often hard to be brave—be kind. But most of all, never lose sight of who you are and what you value. [1]  

Take note of the date of this original post.

[1] Sarah Kendzior, “We’re Heading into Dark Times. This Is How to Be Your Own Light in the Age of Trump,” The Correspondent (online news platform), November 18, 2016. 

Vive le Canada!

I am Franco-American. What does it mean to be a Franco-American? Let's just say, it's personal. My French Canadian grandparents, Memere, Marie Laure, and Pepere, Arthur, were born in the Province of Quebec in the village of St. Patrice de Beaurivage (beautiful shore). Early in their marriage they emigrated to the United States. Their Quebecois roots outlasted their departure from a homeland they loved and shared through language, food, faith, and music with their many descendents.

Like many immigrants to the U.S., they sought work opportunities. During the industrial revolution that meant mill jobs. My first-generation American-born mother was a "mill girl".  Her education ended at grade 10. She talked about twelve-hour days standing on her feet in hot, unventilated, noisy vast rooms where textiles were made on huge looms. Her paltry pay was turned over to help the large family in which she grew up in Lowell, Massachusetts. Those same Mills are now part of the National Park Service* where those conditions have been replicated. Noise-cancelling headphones are handed out to visitors as a precaution to the deafening slamming of loom against loom. I chose not to wear them for the

one hour when I walked in my mother's well-worn shoes. Her beginnings were so unlike my own, yet we shared a Franco-American heritage. Hers is a story of another time, while at the same time being deeply embedded within my own.

There is no way to shake loose from family folklore and rituals even when no longer practiced. My many cousins have a million stories to share whenever we get together. We help each other to remember the Sunday dinners after Mass; the Saturday suppers of toutiere (pork pies), a staple in all our households; the Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve followed by the reveillon de Noel (more pork pies!); the required French spoken with Memere and Pepere, even as we struggled in our bi-lingual classrooms to read and write the phrases we knew by heart; the Uncles with their fiddles (everyone had one, hand-made by Pepere).**

"Little Canada" where my grandparents settled in their adopted country was surrounded by the "Irish", the "Greek", the "Polish" people, each with their own customs and foods and music. They had their celebrations, we had ours, and sometimes it all overlapped in one gigantic melting pot!

Canadians are not Americans, anymore than Americans are Canadians. How could they be? Erasing cultures is impossible. Everything embedded in a person, say in a Franco-American girl, is once and for all.

I'll never stop wanting the "perfect crepe" that my mother made from her mother's recipe. I'll never stop seeing clothing as a fabric made by someone at a loom. I'll never stop remembering the words of "O Canada" which we sang in our Catholic school after the Pledge of Allegiance. I'll never forget the fiddles in the glass case in the parlor in my grandparents' home. Whenever they opened those French doors to the otherwise off-limit room, there was stomping and singing and playing music of a heritage harking back to Vieux Quebec. The tiny French-speaking Province in the Great White North is a neighbor, not a foe, and for many a family.

Canadians, like Americans, fought for their freedom.

The 1774 Quebec Act*** gave the Quebecois, my grandparents, their place and language with local rights and customs and protected their Catholic religion. That act stands today.

This is a Canadian story passed along from grandparent to parent to daughters and sons. Nothing can change that history! Rien!

*https://www.nps.gov/lowe/learn/historyculture/the-mill-girls-of-lowell.htm

**https://youtu.be/qno-ac4R7dU?si=egm5-D6WrUYit7Gp

***https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/quebec-act