I took a trip to Women's Right's National Historical Park in Seneca Falls, New York. It was a beautiful drive up there throught the Northern Tier of Pennsylvania and through Elmira and Watkins Glen and up the west side of Seneca Lake through the vineyards. It has been raining in this part of the country for about a week but the trees along the way were green and gold and red and orange.
There are some little shops in downtown Seneca Falls. My favorite was WomanMade Products which carries just that, all kinds of great stuff. They also had all kinds of bumper stickers and buttons from BushMustGo.net, so I picked up a few of those.
The exhibit at the park's visitor center is a bit dated. I don't think that anything has been updated since the late 1980s and it seems to present things from the perspective of a very 1970s idea of radical feminism. The park rangers, however, are very knowledgeable and were eager to answer questions about the Women's Rights Convention of 1848 and the participants in that convention.
I thought that it was interesting that only one signer of the Declaration of Sentiments lived long enough to see women get the right t vote in the United States.
Today I saw a film about a lynching in Delaware in 1903. One of the commentators noted that these "spectacle lynchings" were ritualistic events that involved the whole community. He said that more often than not it was a well-organized event that was very orderly and involved thousands of people, including women and children. Many of the more than 3500 documented lynchings from 1865 to 1920 took place outside of "The South". I think that everyone in this country that allowed lynchings to take place was just as guilty as the people who lit the fire or tied the rope or shot the gun. Just like today, those of us who allow our government to invade and occupy sovereign countries, to drop bombs on civilians, to hold torture and detain prisoners indefinately are just as guilty as those actively participating in such things.
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I agree, we owe it to our membership in the human race to protest what's going on. But if there is a kind of moral equivalent in the war, only the guards at Abu Grai-ohhhh damnnn-I-won't-try-to-spell-the-name could come close. The lynchings were a form of entertainment -- there can be nothing as horrifying as that.
The name of the film was "In the dead fire's ashes" taken from the Langston Hughes poem below.
The SouthThe lazy, laughing South
With blood on its mouth.
The sunny-faced South,
Beast-strong,
Idiot-brained.
The child-minded South
Scratching in the dead fire's ashes
For a Negro's bones.
Cotton and the moon,
Warmth, earth, warmth,
The sky, the sun, the stars,
The magnolia-scented South.
Beautiful, like a woman,
Seductive as a dark-eyed whore,
Passionate, cruel,
Honey-lipped, syphilitic--
That is the South.
And I, who am black, would love her
But she spits in my face.
And I, who am black,
Would give her many rare gifts
But she turns her back upon me.
So now I seek the North--
The cold-faced North,
For she, they say,
Is a kinder mistress,
And in her house my children
May escape the spell of the South.People would come to the spot of the lynching and look for souvenirs. That is as disturbing as the photos of white men and women posing with the immolated body.
Ahh, the good old days. :-|
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