Celebrating May Day

Demand for the eight-hour day inspires a world-wide holiday

My regular pagan holiday post

No one ever knew who threw the bomb that killed a cop during a peaceful rally. Then the police opened fire, killing seven more of their own and several bystanders. 

But the Powers That Be said someone had to pay. They arrested eight men and charged them with conspiracy. 

The accused, immigrants and anarchists, became convenient scapegoats in a city gripped by fear and suspicion. The mainstream media fanned the flames of anti-immigrant hysteria with sensationalized tales and outright lies.

As the trial unfolded, prejudice tainted the proceedings. The judge’s bias was palpable, and jurors were selected for their predispositions. Despite a glaring lack of evidence, the men were convicted.

Four were hanged. One committed suicide in prison. Others were given long sentences. 

The progressive governor, burdened by the knowledge of their innocence, commuted the sentences of the surviving men. Then he faced the wrath of voters who, swayed by fear and misinformation, ousted him from office in a bitter electoral battle.

It happened in Chicago in 1886, but to me it reads like today’s news. Except for the bomb. Our modern methods of murder are far more sophisticated.

Could history repeat itself in a modern age? 

I worry. The specter of prejudice still haunts our land, immigrants demonized, and dissent silenced. The media—mainstream and social–wields its influence with impunity, shaping public opinion with biased narratives and sensationalism. 

Meanwhile, our judiciary does not even try to conceal its corruption. The militarization of police forces and the epidemic of police violence create more distrust in those pledged to keep us safe. We won’t forget the killing of a 13-year-old boy, Andy Lopez, in Santa Rosa at the hands of a deputy sheriff.

So, yeah. It seems little human evolution has taken place since 1886.

At that 1886 Chicago rally, workers had agitated for the eight-hour work day, a movement then brutally crushed by employers with the help of federal, state and local police forces. With its leaders executed and imprisoned, the Chicago labor movement’s head was cut off. Labor lost that battle, but eventually won the war for the eight-hour day. Their slogan, written in a song of the time, was “Eight hours for work, eight hours for sleep, eight hours for what we will.”

The eight defendants were all thinking and articulate men, but the one I find most interesting is the one man who was not an immigrant, Albert Parsons. Born in Alabama in 1848, he traced his ancestry back to English colonists in 1632. Some ancestors fought in the American revolution.

Parsons moved to Texas and fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War. Then he realized he had fought for the wrong side. He called the war “the slaveholders’ rebellion.” 

He became a Republican, supporting Reconstruction efforts and running for office, making enemies of his former comrades and the KKK. Then he joined the socialist movement, eventually denouncing electoral politics and joining the anarchists and the labor movement. 

His marriage to Lucy Parsons (Gonzales), a Black woman, defied the norms of a society steeped in prejudice, and her activism would become legendary in its own right. As she led the campaign to win a new trial, one Chicago official called her “more dangerous than a thousand rioters.” 

Albert Parsons saw the connections between slavery and capitalism. He said: “My enemies in the southern states consisted of those who oppressed the black slave. My enemies in the north are among those who would perpetuate the slavery of the wage workers.”

What made Albert Parsons switch sides? I think it was working with previously enslaved people after the war and at the start of Reconstruction. He began to see things from their point of view. 

The Haymarket Affair, as the events in Chicago came to be called, inspired May Day, or International Workers Day, as a labor holiday in countries around the world on May 1. It was never a national holiday in the US because of ourgovernment’s resistance to encouraging worldwide working-class unity. But workers in the US celebrate May Day anyway, and it will be marked again this year in cities across the country.

Photos are from the 2019 Santa Rosa May Day march

California Labor Councils are planning actions up and down the state. This year’s May Day actions are about solidarity across sectors as workers push for higher wages, stronger contracts, the right to join a union, and fight back against corporate greed.

Here in Sonoma County on May 1 we will be marching for “Immigrant Rights Are Human Rights” starting at the county sheriff’s office. Marchers will demand that the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors proactively advocate for a Path To Citizenship policy in Congress and also support a county ordinance which would prohibit any collaboration or information sharing between the Sonoma County Sheriff and Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The Haymarket Affair was a seminal moment in the struggle for workers’ rights. The martyrs of that turbulent era—Albert Parsons, August Spies, George Engel, and Adolph Fischer—must not be forgotten. Their legacy endures, inspiring movements for social justice and workers’ rights around the world. 

The Haymarket martyrs memorial and Lucy Parson’s grave at Forest Hill cemetery in Chicago

A happy Beltane and a revolutionary May Day to all!

Facebook Hacked!

They Don’t Care. They Don’t Have To.

AI failed to create this simple image, so I had to draw it. Sheesh!

Facebook users around the world are getting hacked and there’s nothing we can do about it.

It happened to me. The thieves gained control of my page and access to my five thousand friends. Then they started trying to scam them by using my name to rip them off.

When I realized I’d been hacked, I immediately started working to get my page back, thinking this must happen to Facebook users all the time. Yes, in fact it does, but it turns out there is nothing we can do to restore our pages. I tried Facebook’s online help center, which gives us hope that we can restore our pages but just runs us around in circles until all hope dies. I couldn’t even get the page taken down. There is no customer support, no number to call. You are on your own. 

Aside from the frustration, I also feel violated, like my house has been broken into and robbed. And I’m worried sick about my friends getting scammed. The thieves want money and they posted a car for sale on the site to get folks to call them. They also use Messenger to contact people. 

When I couldn’t get into my account because it is now owned by someone else, I asked friends to look at it and report back to me. The car ad was posted, taken down and then posted again. A couple of weeks later, after many friends reported the hack (and many called me to ask about the car), the account was deleted, presumably by Facebook. But they never contacted me nor offered any help. Friends did send me numbers to contact Facebook, but none got me anywhere.

After much research, I’ve come to the conclusion that there is nothing to be done. 

It turns out this happens to lots of folks. Some, those who run businesses through Facebook especially, are losing thousands of dollars without any hope of getting the money back. There are companies that charge a lot of money to restore a page, but that can take weeks, even years, if it works at all. 

It makes me think of the snarky Lily Tomlin character Ernestine who represented the phone company in a skit. “We don’t care,” she told customers. “We don’t have to. We’re the phone company.”

I was a Facebook user for many years. A retired electrician, I belong to a worldwide community of women who work in the construction trades. Women in the trades are still isolated and targeted with harassment. Facebook is/was a great way for us to communicate, tell our stories and support each other.  

So now I am Facebook free. I’ll miss my Facebook friends, but I won’t miss Facebook.

More than two billion people use Facebook or one of its other services, Instagram, WhatsApp or Messenger, every day. And despite a rising number of privacy scandals and public backlash, Facebook is still growing, reporting $39 billion net profit in 2023.

There oughta be a law.

Wharlest Jackson Died for Our Rights

The Black Freedom Movement and Tradeswomen History

I want to take us back in time and imagine a world, a culture, in which job categories were firmly divided between MEN and WOMEN. Women were restricted to pink collar jobs that paid too little to raise a family on or even to live without a man’s support. Even doing the same jobs, women were legally paid less than men. Married women were not allowed to work outside the home. Single women who found jobs as teachers or secretaries were fired as soon as they married. Black people were only allowed to work as laborers or house cleaners.

This was the world we fought to change.

Tradeswomen who have jobs today must thank Black workers who began the fight for jobs and justice. 

The Black Freedom Movement has advocated for workplace equity since the end of the civil war.

The movement gained power during and after WWII. A. Philip Randolph headed the sleeping car porters union, the leading Black trade union in the US. In 1940 he threatened to march on Washington with ten thousand demonstrators if the government did not act to end job discrimination in federal war contracts. FDR capitulated and signed executive order 8802, the first presidential order to benefit Blacks since reconstruction. It outlawed discrimination by companies and unions engaged in war work on government contracts. This executive order marked the start of affirmative action.

The fight to desegregate the workforce continued.

In the early 1960s in the San Francisco Bay Area, protesters organized successful picket campaigns against businesses that refused to hire Blacks, including the Palace hotel, car dealerships and Mel’s Drive-In. Many of the protesters were white students at UC Berkeley.

In August 1963, the march on Washington brought 200,000 people to the capitol to protest racial discrimination and show support for civil rights legislation. The civil rights act of 1964, signed into law by President Johnson, is the legal structure that women and POC have used to put nondiscrimination into practice.

But change did not come quickly or easily.

Black workers at a tire plant in Natchez Mississippi were organizing to desegregate jobs. The CIO, Congress of Industrial Organizations, supported them in this fight. In 1967, three years after the civil rights act became law, a Black man, Wharlest Jackson, who had won a promotion to a previously “white” job in the tire plant, was murdered by the KKK. They blew up his truck as he was driving home from work. No one was ever arrested or prosecuted for this crime.

Wharlest Jackson was the father of five. His wife, Exerlina, was among those arrested for peacefully insisting on equal treatment during a boycott of the town of Natchez’s white businesses. She was sent to Parchman penitentiary.

Jackson was just one of many who died for our right to be treated equally at work.

Tradeswomen are part of the feminist, civil rights and union movements. We continue to seek allies because we are few.  

Discrimination has not ended, but, because of decades of organizing, our work lives have improved. We owe much to the Black workers who sought equity in employment for decades before us. 

We Survive Another Disaster

Celebrating Ostara, the Vernal Equinox

My regular pagan holiday post

Holly keeps saying the water is rising but I am watching a movie. She says its rising really fast. She’s running around trying to find rubber boots. Oh man, the movie is almost done. But you don’t see how fast it’s rising she says. I look out the window and see that rain is pouring down and the street in front of our house is a lake. Ok where did I put my rubber boots? They have a zebra design (bought at Sebastopol hardware) so they shouldn’t be too hard to find in the mess that is our garage.

Our garage has been a mess for a long time. Goddess, how long has it been since we could actually park our Bolt in the car garage? Years, it’s been years. It’s always something. Lately it’s that Holly’s mom died and Holly had to clean out her stuff from Mom’s room at the assisted living place where she had lived for five years. Amazing how much stuff you can fit into one room. Now it’s in our garage, what’s left over after giving away what we could.

The boots are tucked in a corner of the garage, which is already flooding. Out in the driveway the water comes halfway up to the top of my boots. Holly has already soaked her short boots and has moved on to water shoes.

We think the problem is a blocked drain somewhere in the system. Neighbors are all out on the street and their nearby driveways are flooding too, but ours is the only house whose garage is flooding. Holly and I quickly move cardboard boxes out of the way of the water. Most of our stuff is stored in plastic boxes, but Mom’s stuff is not.

We stand in the open garage and watch as the fire department tries to free the drains. One of the firefighters is a woman! Our neighbor Chuck trots back and forth through the muck trying to explain how the drainage system works in the neighborhood. Chuck was here 20 years ago when this happened. The story goes that his car floated away, or maybe his car was just engulfed in water and the city paid to fix it. I move our car up further as far into the garage as the junk stored there will allow.

Out in the street in front of our house the firefighters are up to their knees in water and they are working to find the plugged drain. The water keeps rising. One young firefighter joins us in the garage to check on and calm us old ladies. We are a lot calmer that he is. He keeps saying how sorry he is. We keep saying it’s not his fault that our street is flooding.

Our sump pump turns itself on, the first time we’ve ever seen this happen. We usually have to help it along, pulling the bulb up by hand to make it work. That means the water under the house in the crawl space is rising too. The pump works hard to pump the water out of the crawl space and onto the flooded driveway. Then the water flows back under the house again. Futile. We worry that the crawl space water will rise up to the floor boards and come up through the wood floor. We imagine ourselves sloshing around the house in a foot of water. I mentally tally the cost of replacing the oak flooring. This could be a real disaster. We run around the house picking things up from the floor—computers, furniture, air filters. Holly folds up the colorful quilt our friend Linda just made for her and puts it up high in a closet.

It gets dark. Then the city arrives with a vacuum truck. The water begins to recede. They are still on the street the next day looking for the blockage. They tell me this magical truck also can blow out the blockage and that’s what they’re trying to do.

One of our neighbors, an engineer, meets with the city people to work on a solution. I say we need a drawing so we understand where the water goes. He says you can find it online but it is incorrect. The system was designed to drain the water in the opposite direction than it is draining! He is pressuring the city to fix the drainage system so flooding does not become a neighborhood ritual.

In the six years we’ve lived here we’ve survived fire (the neighborhood was evacuated in the Tubbs fire in 2017 and we self-evacuated in 2019 and 2020), and an earthquake on the Rogers Creek fault which runs very near our house, if not under it. But we never thought we’d have to worry about flooding. We live on a hill! Come to find out there’s a dip at the top of the hill right where our house sits. 

Now we are calling ourselves the Dips on the Hill.

We fervently hope that flooding does not become a routine disaster on our block and with that in mind we are not inventing any associated rituals. But we did partake in an annual spring ritual especially festive in the gay community–watching the Oscars. Sonoma County’s party takes place at the Rialto theater in Sebastopol. It’s a benefit for Food for Thought, a food bank started in 1988 to serve people with AIDS. Lesbians, like our friend Jude Mariah, were the early organizers. Still going strong, it’s a free service that depends on volunteers to deliver healthy meals to all community members with serious illnesses, more than 4000 people last year.

The vernal equinox this year is March 19, the astronomical beginning of the spring season in the northern hemisphere. Pagans call it Ostara, a word that comes from the Anglo-Saxon goddess name, Eostre. Also the root of the word Easter.

Here in Sonoma County we are celebrating the last of the atmospheric rivers and the beginning of warm weather.

Happy Ostara!

Molly (and Holly)

Queering Lunar New Year

My regular pagan holiday letter

Dear Friends,

Ah, the legendary red envelope – a festive pocket-sized surprise filled with cash, making it rain luck on New Year’s Day. My memory holds onto that one special red packet, a gift from my friend MeiBeck, a tradeswoman sister, and an ironworker extraordinaire. 

Inside? A crisp two-dollar bill, because we’re both as queer as a two-dollar bill. With that red envelope, MeiBeck queered Chinese New Year, and confirmed me as a member of her fabulous queer family!

We were among millions of people celebrating the Lunar New Year, a serious party among East and Southeast Asian cultures–Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, and more. The celebration can be traced back 4000 years.

Lunar New Year begins on the date of the second new moon after the winter solstice, which usually occurs December 21. This means that the first day of the Lunar New Year can take place anytime between January 21 and February 20. This year, the year of the dragon, the celebration kicks off on February 10. Forget one-day celebrations; this shindig lasts for 15 days, rocking the lunar party until the moon is full, at the lantern festival on the last day.

At Lunar New Year we celebrate the end of winter and the start of spring. Traditionally, New Year’s is all about family, ancestor honoring, feasting, dancing dragons, lanterns and of course fireworks! China traditionally marks Lunar New Year and other holidays with loud firecrackers to rid families and businesses of bad luck.

We all know that the Chinese invented fireworks. As the story goes, around 800 CE, an alchemist mixed sulfur, charcoal, and potassium nitrate (a food preservative) hoping to find the secret to eternal life. Instead, the mixture caught on fire, and gunpowder was born! When the powder was packed into bamboo or paper tubes and lit on fire, history had its first fireworks.

According to legend, the centuries-old New Year’s tradition was started to scare off demons. Fireworks helped drive away the mythological nian, a fierce lionlike beast that rose from the sea each New Year’s Day to feast on Chinese villagers and their livestock. Nian disliked loud noises and the color red, so villagers posted red signs on their doors and lit firecrackers. The ritual is still performed to ward off evil spirits.

My friend MeiBeck in her ironworker gear. Photo edit by Lyn Shimizu

I caught a double dose of airport fireworks during a long layover in Beijing—both landing pre-dawn and taking off that night. It was awesome! But that was before China’s state media cast the practice as an environmental faux pas, an air polluting indulgence. The state now urges families to use flowers and electronic substitutes instead.

Hundreds of Chinese cities have banned or restricted the use of pyrotechnics since 2018. Beijing extended a downtown fireworks ban across the entire city in 2022, allowing it to record its cleanest air on record since the monitoring of hazardous PM2.5 particles began in 2013.

Major Chinese cities organized official displays to ring in 2023. But across the country, members of the public celebrated China’s first post-COVID New Year by disregarding the ban. Social media images showed people shooting fireworks from the backs of mopeds and through car windows.

San Francisco, where I lived for 40+ years, has a large Asian population, and the Lunar New Year still paints the town red. Many neighborhoods are bustling in the lead up to the new year. The whole city celebrates. Last year San Francisco’s Chinatown had a five-hour long pyrotechnic display. 

San Francisco boasts the biggest Chinese New Year parade outside of Asia–a tradition since the gold rush days. And it’s not a solo act; every town around the Bay Area has its own Lunar New Year spectacle. We Sonoma County residents have a menu of celebrations to choose from.

Lunar New Year coincides with the pagan holiday Imbolc, heralding the start of spring. Here in northern California, February feels like the real New Year’s kickoff. Signs of spring are everywhere – blossoming trees, early flowers showing off. In December, as a solstice ritual, I planted hyacinths and tulips in our drought tolerant front yard. These bulbs do their thing in rainy spring, no watering needed. They will soon bloom. Right now, in the midst of an atmospheric river of rain, our daffodils are in full bloom.

While we won’t be setting off fireworks, there are many parts of this celebration we like to adopt.

In China everyone takes the first day of Lunar New Year off work. I wish I’d known this when I was still working. For retirees, I guess it’s a day to do whatever we feel like (much like every other day).

There is lots of feasting and we can totally get into that. I look forward to eating Chinese, Vietnamese and Korean food!

In the week before the new year, cleaning house takes priority, sweeping away any ill fortune and making way for incoming good luck. The Goddess of the Garage beckons us for a spring cleaning extravaganza.

And we will not forget the household deities traditionally honored at New Years–a nod to the Kitchen Witch and a shout-out to the Garden Goddess. It’s time to get the garden ready for spring planting.

This year I’m following MeiBeck’s example and queering the tradition of the red envelope. I found envelopes, Chinese lanterns and new year’s candy at the World Market. Now I just have to find $2 bills. There aren’t many in circulation but the U.S. government mint still prints them. I’ll give them to friends who, like me, are queer as a two-dollar bill.

However you celebrate, we wish you a Happy New Year.

Love, Molly (and Holly)

Taking Back Traditions

My Regular Pagan Holiday Post

Winter Solstice 2023

Dear Friends,

In 1977 I lived in a collective house with Jewish lesbians. Banning the Xmas tree from the living room was fine with me. I wanted to ban the holiday entirely. It took years to wean myself of all the expectations and burdens that the holiday brings. Finding the perfect gift for everyone, sending cards to dozens (I sent anti-Xmas cards), forced shopping amidst anxious crowds and booming Xmas music in the stores. To avoid the ubiquitous music I stopped shopping after October. It helped to join the Church of Stop Shopping.* 

I was a regular bah humbugger.

I already knew that the solstice holiday had been stolen from pagans by christians. But it took years for me to embrace the decorated tree again. Now I finally have, to the relief of my partner.

The solstice tree is an old pagan tradition–bringing a tree indoors and hanging things on it. Before the advent of electric lights, my Swedish ancestors actually put burning candles on the tree. I wonder how many house fires resulted.  Asking for a fire marshal friend.

Last year my wife Holly and I discovered that it made us happy to start getting into the solstice spirit early by buying our solstice tree when the tree farm opens for business the day after Thanksgiving. We did it again this year. Two years in a row makes it a ritual!

Now our sweet smelling fir tree is decorated to the hilt. As Holly danced around the tree hanging the ornaments and I watched from my recliner, we fondly remembered where we acquired each of them and what they represent. I still have the Santa and elf ornaments knitted by my Swedish grandmother. She decorated her tree with Scandinavian straw reindeer, wooden and homemade candy cane ornaments. 

Here in the MoHo household we are all about reimagining cultural institutions. If we can take back the tree, why can’t we reclaim other christian traditions? 

This year we decided to recycle Advent. 

Neither my childhood Presbyterian church nor Holly‘s evangelical sect practiced Advent. But I have a vague memory of seeing an Advent calendar in the home of a Catholic girlfriend. The idea of getting to open a little door with a gift inside for the whole month of December is enticing for a kid. Kind of like Hanukkah only longer and presumably better. Did the christians steal from the Jews too? Asking for some friends.

The word advent is derived from the Latin word adventus, meaning coming, which is a translation from Greek. We felt we needed another word for our pre-solstice holiday and we tried to come up with one. None of the synonyms work. Arrival, onset, appearance, approach, entrance. Holly likes the word Looming, but that sounds ominous to me. We both like Coming but it’s too confusing. So we decided to stick with advent for now, a perfectly nonreligious word which can be applied to any holiday, really. 

In the christian tradition Advent is a season. The traditional liturgical color for Advent is violet–so very gay! The Unitarian Universalist Association promotes four words for the four Advent Sundays of the month of December. A candle is lit each week to symbolize hope, peace, joy and love. We can get behind that! I do like the Unitarians. They take the prospect of peace seriously and show up at every peace march. 

Our takeover of Advent wasn’t a planned theft. It was rather inadvertent. We each secretly bought a wine advent calendar for the house. When they were both delivered on the same day, we discovered we had each bought the exact same thing!

The wine advent calendar is a cardboard box about 18 by 14 inches and about 7 inches deep, enough for little wine bottles laid on their sides. It has 24 doors, each with a number. You open one door a day and pull out a bottle. We celebrate each evening however we want, by reading a poem or just having a conversation. But there must be a toast. Our favorite: Cheers Queers!

Then, because we observe solstice and not Xmas we had to count back from December 21 instead of December 25. Because of poor math skills, we started on November 24—days early. Whatever. Once you start, you have to keep going. I think that’s what the liturgy says.

The wine comes in adorable small bottles, enough for one glass, so we are glad we got two calendars. Of course, this means we are committed to drinking a glass of wine every night until solstice or until the wine runs out and every door on the calendar is opened. We can do that!

Advent is all about anticipation of the great event—in this case solstice, or the longest night of the year, marking “astronomical winter” in the northern hemisphere, after which the light begins to return. It makes us think of the Carly Simon song, Anticipation. We are Boomers, after all.

Now we are pondering how to use the 48 cute wine bottles. Perhaps next year we shall gift all our friends with MoHo’s Special Herbal Elixir. What is that? We don’t yet know, but Holly has been experimenting with something called fire cider!

Now I’m embracing the solstice holiday and all our reclaimed pagan rituals that go with it. I’m finally enjoying the holiday season that I once eschewed.

Bah humbug no more!

Happy solstice to all and to all a good long night!

Love, Molly (and Holly)

*The Church of Stop Shopping calls consumerism “the biggest and baddest fundamentalist religion in the U.S.” Now, they’ve got some great music! https://revbilly.com/music/

Honoring Native Americans

Reinventing Some Holiday Myths

Dear Friends,

As we construct our ofrendas for Day of the Dead, decorate our yards for Halloween and celebrate the pagan holiday Samhain, I’ve been thinking about two other holidays we celebrate this time of year–Indigenous Peoples’ Day and Thanksgiving. This is a story about how the meaning and celebrations of American holidays can evolve to reflect new understanding of our history. 

As we learn more details about our history, in the last few years Americans have been rethinking the stories connected with Thanksgiving and Columbus Day. 

My generation of students learned to recite, “In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” We learned about the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria and that Christopher Columbus “discovered America.”

In elementary school in the 1950s I participated in those Thanksgiving pageants in which you were either a Pilgrim—boys with black buckled hats and shoes, girls in long, aproned dresses and bonnets—or an Indian with feathered headband and tomahawk. The story we enacted was a peaceful meeting and feast between Indians and pilgrims just off the Mayflower. It was the beginning of a happy long relationship between settlers and Indians.

Sadly, almost all of what we were taught was incorrect and incomplete; the myth conveniently left out the parts about genocide, slavery and land theft.

It turns out that Christopher Columbus was a homicidal tyrant who initiated the two greatest crimes in the history of the Western Hemisphere–the Atlantic slave trade, and the American Indian genocide. It’s not dissing Italians to say we no longer venerate this colonizer. Over the last few decades, Columbus Day has evolved into Italian Heritage Day in many locales. 

And we are witnessing a movement to honor Native peoples on Columbus Day. It originated in 1989 in South Dakota during its “Year of Reconciliation,” in an effort to atone for terrible history.

The phrase “merciless Indian savages” is written into the Declaration of Independence. That says all we need to know about how the founders of our country viewed the indigenous people in this land.

For centuries, the American government saw Indians as the enemy, sponsoring their slaughter and “removal.” Through a series of notorious atrocities, including the Trail of Tears, the Sand Creek Massacre and Wounded Knee, (and in California, our own Trail of Tears in 1863, and the Bloody Island Clear Lake massacre in 1850, among others) the United States adopted an official expansionist policy of discriminating against Native Americans in favor of encouraging white settlers in their territories. This policy led to the subjugation, oppression, and death of many Native Americans, whose communities still feel its effects. Only in 1924 were Native Americans allowed to become citizens of the United States, and it took decades more for all states to permit them to vote. 

But as we Americans acknowledge this history, our contemporary view of Native Americans is changing.

Congresswoman Norma Torres (D-CA) has introduced legislation to establish Indigenous Peoples’ Day as a federal holiday. Now, at least 13 states and over 130 cities have adopted Indigenous Peoples’ Day or Native American Day. In 2021, President Joe Biden formally recognized Indigenous Peoples Day. 

Here in Sonoma County indigenous people are well integrated into our local culture and community events. Tribes are consulted by land keepers and planners. Colleges, libraries and nonprofits sponsor classes about indigenous culture. My wife Holly and I attended the Indigenous Peoples’ Day gathering at Santa Rosa Junior College, which featured native dancing, music, drumming, food, speeches and vendors. The SRJC also has a native museum whose latest exhibit features the stories and art of local basket weavers. 

As with Columbus, Americans have been taught a false narrative about Thanksgiving.

Two different early gatherings may have inspired the American Thanksgiving holiday. At the first, in 1621, Wampanoagwere not invited to the pilgrims’ feast, but heard celebratory gunshots and came to the aid of the colonists. They had formed a mutual defense pact. Once there, the Indians stayed and feasted, but the feast did not resolve ongoing prejudices or differences between them. Contrary to the Thanksgiving myth, this was not the start of any long-standing tradition between the settlers and the Wampanoag tribe. The myth doesn’t address the deterioration of this relationship, culminating in one of the most horrific colonial Indian wars on record, King Philip’s War.

Ironically, Thanksgiving as a holiday originates from the Native American philosophy of giving without expecting anything in return. The Wampanoag tribe not only provided food for the first feast, but also the teachings of agriculture and hunting. Corn, beans, wild rice, and turkey are some examples of foods introduced by Native Americans.

The first written mention of a “Thanksgiving” celebration occurs in 1637, after the colonists brutally massacred an entire Pequot village of 700 people, then celebrated their barbaric victory, giving thanks to their god.

During Reconstruction, the Thanksgiving myth allowed New Englanders to create the idea of bloodless colonialism, ignoring the Indian Wars and slavery. Americans could feel good about their colonial past without having to confront its really dark characteristics.

Now children you’ve got to learn these lessons whether you want to or not! Puck Magazine 1899.

For many Native Americans, Thanksgiving is a day of mourning and protest since it commemorates the arrival of settlers in North America and the following centuries of oppression and genocide.

Indian protests in the 1960s and 70s often attacked the Thanksgiving myth. In 1969 after natives took over Alcatraz, allies and Indians of all tribes came together for Unthanksgiving Day, a gathering that’s become a tradition, welcoming all visitors to a dawn ceremony on the island.

In 1970 during a Thanksgiving celebration in Plymouth, activists from the American Indian Movement stormed the Mayflower II ship and occupied it in protest. It was then that the United American Indians of New England recognized the fourth Thursday in November as a National Day of Mourning, to bring awareness to the long lasting impacts that colonization had on the Wampanoag and other Native American tribes. This year the in-person event will also be livestreamed.

Americans are told and we want to believe that we are the saviors of the world. But historical truth is far different. 

Does the acceptance of Indigenous Peoples Day in place of Columbus Day and the updating of the Thanksgiving myth mean that we Americans are beginning to acknowledge our country’s history of imperialism and genocide? I hope so.

This time of year, and these two holidays, Thanksgiving and Indigenous Peoples Day, give us the opportunity to reflect on our collective history, to celebrate the beauty, strength, and resilience of the Native tribes of North America, and also to conduct our own rituals.

Long before settlers arrived, indigenous people were celebrating the autumn harvest and the gift of the earth’s abundance. Native American spirituality, both traditionally and today, emphasizes gratitude for creation, care for the environment, and recognition of the human need for communion with nature and others. I hope we can incorporate these ideals into our American harvest celebrations while we as a species still live.

Whether or not we cook a big turkey dinner, many of us practice Thanksgiving rituals. My and Holly’s ritual is to get together with our exes. We introduced them at a Thanksgiving dinner 13 years ago and they fell in love. We were surprised, and also delighted. Barb and Ana have become our exes and besties. We are participating in a lesbian tradition of incorporating our exes into our chosen families. 

No matter where you are in North America, you are on indigenous land. In Sonoma County we live on unceded territory of the Pomo, Wappo and Coast Miwok tribes.

Good Samhain, Halloween, Day of the Dead and Thanksgiving to you all.

Love, Molly (and Holly)

Contemplating Death and Happiness

My Regular Pagan Holiday Post

Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year celebration that takes place near the autumnal equinox, is all about starting anew. But it’s also about contemplating death.

So says psychology professor David De Steno, who studies the ways emotions guide decisions and behaviors.

Naked Ladies blooming in Santa Rosa’s Rural Cemetery

I’m not Jewish, but I appreciate much that I’ve learned of the religion. Not the god part. As with any religion, we atheists and others can take the parts we like and leave the rest. 

DeSteno writes, “On Rosh Hashana Jews say prayers and listen to readings that celebrate the creation of the world and of human life. But Rosh Hashana also strikes a different, seemingly discordant note. Unlike so many other New Year’s traditions, the Jewish holiday asks those who observe it to contemplate death. The liturgy includes the recitation of a poem, the Unetaneh Tokef, part of which is meant to remind Jews that their lives might not last as long as they’d hope or expect. “Who will live and who will die?” the poem asks. “Who will live out their allotted time and who will depart before their time?

“But the particular brilliance of Rosh Hashana is that it combines thoughts of death with a new year’s focus on a fresh start. Temporal landmarks like the new year celebration offer the chance for a psychological reset. We can separate ourselves from past failures and imperfections — a break that not only prods us to consider new directions in life but also helps us make any changes more effectively.

“Contemplating death helps people make decisions about their future that bring them more happiness. This is an insight about human nature that the rites of Rosh Hashana capture especially well…”

We Get Happier as We Age

Across the globe, research shows, people’s happiness tends to follow a pattern through life. Happiness starts decreasing in one’s 20s, hits its nadir around age 50 and then slowly rises through one’s 70s and 80s, until and unless significant health issues set in.

Goldenrod and Gravensteins. That’s juice pressed from our apples at Pam and Judy’s farm.

I see this in my group of old lesbians. Our recent gathering was a workshop about death and dying. Introducing ourselves, these women in their 60s, 70s and 80s reported on state of mind. We are happy! We are doing what we want to do. We are enjoying the last part of our lives. 

I’ve been contemplating death a lot lately. At this age, in my mid-70s, some of my contemporaries are dying. Every day I imagine that it could be my last. But that acknowledgement helps me to appreciate life.

Visiting my friend Cheryl Parker as she was dying of ovarian cancer and sick from chemo, I repeated an old chestnut, that I’d prefer to die quickly of a heart attack rather than suffer. She said something profound. 

“Don’t be so sure. Just think of all the love I’ve received and all the love I’ve given as I’m dying.” Cheryl lived just nine months from her diagnosis to her death. Much love flowed in all directions and my view of death was transfigured.

Beginning a New Year

It’s interesting that the Jewish new year takes place in the fall, as the natural world is beginning to die. I see beauty in the garden as plants go to seed and die back.  

But my careful attention to the garden recently led to an existential crisis.

I was washing aphids off the narrow leaf milkweed with a strong stream from the hose. Then I had an epiphany. What if monarch butterflies had laid their eggs on the plants and I was washing them off too? Monarchs, of course, are the reason we had planted milkweed in the garden in the first place.

A frittilary visited our garden. Photo by Holly Holbrook

We are participating in the Western Monarch Call to Action, started by scientists after the once populous iconic species reached an all-time low in 2018. They have been decimated by pesticides and habitat loss. 

Monarchs lay their eggs on milkweed and feed on the leaves. Milkweed is their only host plant, critical for their survival. The leaves contain cardiac glycosides which make them toxic to most mammals and birds (Do use gloves when handling the plant). So eating the milkweed protects the insects from predators, as the butterflies become toxic to them! 

Sadly, this summer we have not seen one monarch in our garden, nor many other butterflies either. My wife Holly remembers encountering hundreds of skippers, the small orange brown and black butterflies, when she was a kid growing up in Santa Rosa. We’ve seen a few this summer, but their numbers are way down too.

It’s not just butterflies. Almost all insect populations have experienced steep decline worldwide in recent years. It turns out insects play an essential part in our natural world. We humans need them. If you want to help protect monarchs and all insects, stop using pesticides and poisons in the garden. And grow some milkweed. The best kind to grow here is narrow-leaf milkweed, but any kind (except tropical milkweed) will do.

Monarch butterfly. Photo by Josh Cotten on Unsplash

My concern about monarchs was laid to rest when I read that egg laying takes place mostly in the spring, and continues through the summer. Now that it is fall, I can stop worrying. Sonoma County Gardener Facebook page says just leave the aphids. They are part of the cycle of life and death.

Since the Call to Action began, the monarchs have multiplied. Our citizen action is working! I hope this can presage a new start for the monarchs. 

Happy new year dear friends! Rosh Hashanah is now over but I hope it’s not too late to say Shana tova

OTTERS in Wheelchairs

Wheelchairs were a highlight of my summer travel back home.

If you’ve never been disabled, it can be hard to appreciate disability. This is where construction workers have an advantage in sympathetic understanding. Most of us have been temporarily disabled at one time or other in our lives. We’ve had to butt crawl up the stairs, or learn to use the other hand with one arm in a sling, to navigate on knee scooters and crutches.

Buying lobbies. My first time in a store scooter. No crashes!

I’ve been temporarily disabled many times in my life, but returning from a trip to Maine was the first time I’ve ever gotten to ride in an airport wheelchair. It was awesome!

The wheelchair was a necessity after I sprained my foot getting out of bed. I know. Pretty dumb. I could tell my foot was asleep when I woke up, but I had to pee and thought I could walk on it. Not! I wonder why I’d never learned this lesson until now. Don’t try to walk if your foot is asleep! Wake it up first.

I had traveled to Maine to commune with the OTTERS (Old Tradeswomen Talking Eating and Remembering Shit). We are writing a book about the Tradeswomen Movement. For the last half century we have been agitating to help women enter the construction trades and other nontraditional jobs, and now we are recording our collective history.

OTTERS Dale McCormick, Elly Spicer, Ronnie Sandler, Lynn Shaw, Lisa Diehl, Liz Skidmore, me in front

It was great to see and hug my old friends from all over the country, many for the first time in years. Working together resulted in measurable progress on our book. We stayed in a beautiful country house. Plus we got our fill of lobbies (the Mainers’ word for lobster)!

Then the trip from Portland, Maine to Santa Rosa, California tested my enthusiasm for airplane travel. 

Our “cabin” is the red house, right near Wolf’s Neck Woods State Park

My long day of travel involved three airports. By the time I left Portland, on a warm muggy day, I still could not walk. My friend and Airbnb host, Marty Pottenger, loaned me a walker and, later, a cane. She suggested I call the airline to ask for wheelchair support. She drove me to the airport where I hobbled to the airline counter. She reclaimed the cane and I plopped into a streamlined wheelchair, pushed by a handsome gray-haired man. He said he was retired but worked at the airport two days a week to help make ends meet. I said, “Two days a week! That’s all any of us should have to work. The Wobblies called for a two-hour day but I think a two day week is better.” We talked about jobs we’d worked at as we crawled forward in the security line, and I realized it would have been hell standing in that line without the chair. He left me seated near the gate and went to pick up another disabled traveler.

I was relieved to be in the first group of passengers, those who need special assistance. My foot was healed enough to limp to my airplane seat without a cane.

My Airbnb host in South Portland, Marty Pottenger and her 1850 house

At the stopover in Charlotte, North Carolina there was one other disabled traveler besides me flying on to San Francisco. The young dreadlocked assistant grabbed both our wheelchairs at once, one in each hand, and pushed us at high speed through the packed airport. Charlotte is a big city of 880,000 people and its airport is huge. We flew through the foot traffic with some close calls, but never hitting any walkers. I felt like Casey Jones drivin’ that train. I wanted to see the airport art but was barely able to take in my surroundings. The distance from one gate to the other was far but we got there in plenty of time to make our flight.

At the San Francisco airport I was greeted by a man holding a wheelchair and a sign with my name on it. What service! This was another long trek that required an elevator. I was deposited right at the taxi stand where I caught a ride to a nearby hotel where my wife was waiting. 

I had first planned to take the Santa Rosa airport bus, which runs till midnight from SFO but it would have left me at a bus stop two and a half miles from my house at 2am. I had thought I could walk home from there if necessary. Sometimes Uber and Lyft can be problematic at that time. But Holly came to my rescue. After a good night’s sleep she drove me home from the hotel the next day. Home looked pretty darn good and I’m relieved to be back on solid ground.

Reuniting with my activist buddies was wonderful but I wonder if I’m too old and crabby to fly across the country again. Flying used to feel like a fun adventure. Now it’s just a trial, this time made manageable by wheelchairs and their pushers.

My Life as a Dirty Old Man

Like Judy Grahn’s poem, Edward the Dyke, written in 1965, “…my problem this week is chiefly concerning restrooms.”*

At 74 I’m still often called sir. I’m mistaken for a man because I wear my hair short and usually wear a ball cap. I dress in T-shirts and hiking pants and, often, boots. Hiking is a favorite pastime. When I was younger I was mistaken for a boy, but that can’t be true now, can it? I’m old!

I never cared that people thought me male. On the street it was a defense mechanism. I passed. I stood tall, took big steps, walked fast, balled my hands into fists, and adopted a mean look. Men generally don’t get attacked on the street, especially if they keep to themselves and don’t make eye contact. That could be why I have never been attacked or raped. People don’t see me as female.

In the 1970s I bought all my clothes in the boy’s department at JC Penney. They had flannel shirts in boys’ size 18. I worked as an electrician and wore Carhartts before the brand became fashionable. I got my hair cut by a gay guy who told me my cut was fag cut number three. Sometimes gay men flirted with me. Sometimes I was confronted by men who thought I was a fag. “You idiot, I’m a dyke!” was my comeback, yelled as they drove away, 

There was a time when I tried to signify my femaleness, mainly to ease the discomfort of others. I would wear dangly earrings or women’s clothes. Not dresses. Maybe a scoop neck T-shirt, a bra. But that didn’t always do the trick. People make an immediate decision about gender and changing that first impression is not easy.

I was once nearly thrown out of a women’s dressing room. The authorities have never arrived in time to eject me from the toilets, but I get dirty looks from women there. Often, entering the restroom, they will look at me, then look at the sign on the door, thinking they must have made a mistake. Or implying that I made a big mistake. Their misgendering me has made them mad—at me! How dare I wear male clothes and confuse them!

To these women my response is usually, “I’m one of you.” Once I open my mouth they usually get it. I don’t have a male voice.

But, even after all these years, I was struck dumb recently at a roadside rest stop when a man insisted I should use the men’s toilet. 

“The men’s is around the other side,” he instructed.

Many retorts went through my mind. I wondered if I should just pull up my shirt and show him my tits. 

My wife Holly reminded me that I’ve often responded, “Do I have to show you my tits?” It’s a way to get the idea across without actually having to disrobe.

These days showing tits might not be enough to prove femaleness. After all, any body can have tits—or not—if they want. But here is the reason showing my tits would be all it takes. Nobody would buy tits like mine. Old lady tits.

I ignored him and kept walking. Why should I have to answer to this man I didn’t even know, had never seen before, was likely a tourist from some red state. I could see he had gotten off one of those big day tripping buses.

Apparently thinking I didn’t speak English, he began gesturing with his arms. “Around that way,” he said, slowly mouthing the words as he flung his arms in circles. 

I sized him up. He looked perfectly harmless, rather short, oldish maybe 65. He wore a fisher’s hat, a plaid shirt, shorts and sandals. I was thinking I could take him if necessary. I’d go right for the crotch. 

There was nothing sinister about him and I saw no wisdom there. The old white-skinned guy was just trying to be helpful. His face had a quizzical look, like wondering what this man was trying to do in the women’s restroom.

Does he see me as old, this helpful bathroom monitor? I have no facial hair (ok a little, but I pluck and shave). He must think I’m an old, shaven man. Does he think I’m a dirty old man with bad intentions? Does he think I’m targeting the women’s room to attack women? Gee, getting into this guy’s head is scary.

Finally, I just said, “I’m a woman,” and that was enough.

Later, I kind of wished I’d pulled up my T-shirt and showed him my tits.

*From the lesbian poetry archive: http://www.lesbianpoetryarchive.org/sites/default/files/Grahn_Edward.pdf