Abortion Rights in Jeopardy as Roe v. Wade Reaches 38th Anniversary

Statement from NOW President Terry O’Neill

January 21, 2011

Tomorrow is the 38th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade decision recognizing a woman’s constitutional right to legal abortion care. As we honor this milestone, we thank those whose courage and determination made Roe possible, and we pause to remember the many women who died from illegal abortions and all those who have been killed or injured in the course of providing the full range of reproductive health care to women.

This anniversary takes place at a critical time for the women of this country. Since last November’s election, the radical right has paraded itself in new clothes. After a campaign season with promises to put the economy first, the new speaker of the House, John Boehner (R-Ohio), just yesterday clarified that further abortion funding restrictions are of “highest” priority for Republicans, and a jobs package will come later.

With that statement, Republicans in the House introduced the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act (H.R. 3). This dangerous bill goes far beyond making permanent the deeply unjust Hyde Amendment, which currently bars federal funding for abortion care. It would drastically reduce access to medically necessary emergency abortions at state and local public hospitals; impose tax penalties on individuals and businesses using private health care plans; and further whittle exemptions for rape, incest and health.

The late Henry Hyde, author of the infamous Hyde Amendment, admitted that he wanted to prevent all women from obtaining abortions, but the only ones he had real power over were poor women, so that’s who he went after. Can you believe John Boehner has called this man a hero?

Legislators from the radical right are eager to make this moment a turning point in their crusade to outlaw abortion care. We cannot let them. We cannot let them because abortion is a constitutional right. And we cannot let them because they won’t stop there. I promise that if we let them overturn Roe, they will come for contraception next.

But we outnumber them, and if this anniversary tells us anything, it’s that women can, must and will retain control over their bodies and their lives. Abortion is neither tragic nor trivial. Each woman’s story is different, and politicians do not have a right to make unilateral decisions for all women on the basis of their own religious beliefs.

Safe, legal and accessible abortion is a necessary condition for achieving women’s full equality. That is why we work together and why we refuse to give up.

(Republished from http://now.org/press/01-11/01-21.html)

Don’t let this bill move past the committee stage — Sign this petition to protect women’s reproductive rights!

http://health.change.org/petitions/view/stop_the_no_taxpayer_funding_for_abortion_act_2

Here it is, Anthony Tommasini’s list of the Top 10 Composers of all time:

1. Johann Sebastian Bach

2. Ludwig van Beethoven

3. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

4. Franz Schubert

5. Claude Debussy

6. Igor Stravinsky

7. Johannes Brahms

8. Giuseppe Verdi

9. Richard Wagner

10. Bela Bartok 

Not a single mention of any female composer anywhere in his article, not that this comes as a suprise. Mr. Tommasini made it clear in his response to my open letter that there would be no women included in the final list. 

So, in order to vindicate our musical heroines, I will be going through my Top 10 female composers and devoting separate blog posts to each and every one, not only presenting the merits of their musical contributions, but discussing their influence on feminism and society as well. 

Now, who should I start with?……

1. Clara Schumann 

2. Rebecca Clarke 

3. Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre 

4. Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel 

5. Nina Simone 

6. Lili Boulanger 

7. Cecile Chaminade 

8. Amy Beach 

9. Germaine Tailleferre 

10. Louise Farrenc

Here is Mr. Tommasini’s response to my letter, sent 1/19/2011 at 1:26pm:

“Dear Ms. Crane,

Thanks for your strong and thoughtful note. And you make many compelling points.

But please remember that this whole project is, in a way, an intellectual game, a game I’m taking seriously, but for the fun of it. I’m not talking about important composers, or even just influential composers, but the all-time greatest composers, admittedly a hard concept to grapple with. 

Yes, Chopin limited himself to the piano and did not write anywhere near as much chamber music as Clara Schumann, who was a superwoman. But, like her, he wrote his pieces mostly for himself, to perform. I wasn’t criticizing Clara Schumann for mostly writing piano pieces and chamber music. I was simply saying that had she written symphonies and such she would have faced a dead end in trying to get them performed, which is true. Yes, women in all fields have advanced by “bothering” to push hard. I just meant to suggest that we could all understand why she might not have been compelled to try.

I then spoke of how different things are today, with so many prominent female composers that it is really pointless to even use the term “female composers.” And, in future decades, maybe some of the women who are thriving today will be viewed as contenders for a top ten list. But we will need time to sort this out, which is why I eliminated living composers from the project. Can we say today that John Adams, or even Elliott Carter will be viewed as all-time giants? We can’t. We’ll see.

The idea of considering Clara Schumann as an all-time top ten composer when I have no slots for Monteverdi, Haydn, Chopin or Robert Schumann is impossible.

Thanks for writing me.

Sincerely,
Anthony Tommasini”

Dear Mr. Tommasini,

I am writing this letter in response to your article, “Top 10 Composers: The Female Factor”, in the New York Times yesterday. While I find your project of determining the ten greatest composers admirably ambitious and intriguing, I consider your philosophy towards women in this matter to be conservative and somewhat uniformed from a woman’s perspective. 

As a professional musician and feminist, I feel compelled to discuss how your disregard for women in compiling this list negatively impacts the progression of women’s influence in the arts. 

About Clara Schumann, you write:

“She was also a gifted composer, though she mostly wrote piano pieces, songs, chamber works: things that she and a circle of musician friends could perform. If she had tried to compose symphonies and operas, even she, for all her renown, would have hit a dead end with male orchestras and opera companies, which would have been unwilling to champion the works of a woman. So why bother?” 

It is stubbornly patriachal statements like this that smother the advancement of women in the field of music. If no one “bothered” then where would we be? It is the act of bothering, of changing social norms and expectations, that shape society. Yes, in times past, this was the prevailing attitude towards women, but do we allow it to dictate our assessments of talent and influence in the present day? Your assertion not only propagates the “deep-seated male chauvinism of our Western culture”, it contradicts the criteria that you initially identified for determining “The Top Ten”. You contemplated the following issues in determining the greatest composers. I will use Clara Schumann, a woman who bothered a great deal, as an example in making a case for the consideration of women composers:

1. “Would a composer’s influence and popularity factor in?”

Clara Schumann was popular in her day, widely concertizing and performing her own compositions. Her musical influence on the compositions of Schumann, and later Brahms, is undisputed. We can even find quotes of Clara’s music in her husband’s work. And I would also like to add, in regards to feminism, that her example was profound; managing the household, giving birth to and caring for eight children, supporting her husband’s career and his mental instability, all this while she also managed her own career, maintained a concert schedule and found time for composition. She was a superwoman, even by today’s standards. 

2. “What about a composer whose range was narrow but whose music was astonishing?”

Yes, Mrs. Schumann wrote mostly piano music, but so did Chopin. And a good portion of Clara’s music remains unpublished. Who knows what gems are still hidden from our ears. 

3. “Do you break music down by the elements and analyze, for example, who was the greatest master of counterpoint? The most inventive rhythmically? And then, of course, there is my personal take on things, which will, of course, factor in strongly but not be determinative.”

This is all subjective conjecture and there is no fault in that, but it does not specifically exclude Clara Schumann, or any other female composer, from the argument. 

After presenting the above statements, you settled on these two items as the “ground rules”:

1. “I am focusing on Western classical music…And on the assumption that we are too close to living composers to assess their place and their impact, I am eliminating them from consideration.”

Fair enough. Clara Schumann is both of the Western tradition and deceased.

2. “Finally, I am focusing on the eras since the late Baroque.”

Clara Schumann was born 1819 in Leipzig and died 1896 in Frankfurt, placing her definitively in the era of German Romanticism.

So, how exactly, Mr. Tommasini, do these criteria disqualify women composers from making the list? You also stated:

“So if you were to try to compile a list of the 10 greatest composers in history, how would you go about it? For me the resulting list would not be the point. But the process of coming up with such a list might be clarifying and instructive, as well as exasperating and fun.“ 

Excellent premise. If the process is more important that the end result, then I implore you to include women composers and their contributions to music in that process. Here are ten of my favorite women composers that are worthy of investigation, in no particular order. All comply with the ground rules of your project:

1. Clara Schumann (1819-1896)

2. Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979)

3. Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre (1665-1724)

4. Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel (1805-1847)

5. Nina Simone (1933-2003)

6. Lili Boulanger (1893-1918)

7. Cecile Chaminade (1857-1944)

8. Amy Beach (1867-1944)

9. Germaine Tailleferre (1892-1983)

10. Louise Farrenc (1804-1875)

I would like to leave you with this quote by Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel.

“It must be a sign of talent that I do not give up, though I can get nobody to take an interest in my efforts.”

Let’s take an interest. Let’sconsider women composers on the merits of their influence and greatness. If this project is supposed to be “clarifying and instructive, as well as exasperating and fun”, I can think of no better example than the struggle of women in the arts. 

Best Regards in the spirit of music, feminism, and exploration,

Nicole Crane

I took the following photos a couple of months ago, during a drive up the West Coast of Oahu, near Waianae. Traveling this stretch of beach is similar to witnessing the living standards of a third world country. Tent cities. Garbage. Rampant homelessness. This is not the Hawaii they tell you about in guide books. 

Where are the beaches of flaxen sand? The chiseled mountains? The verdant vegetation?

Oh, it’s there. Don’t be mistaken. The idyllic landscape juxtaposes the plight of the people living in it.  

Many of the displaced are Native Hawaiians, unable to keep their heads above water in a colonized state ruled by the tourism industry. Keep in mind, some are homeless, but not jobless. This means that they are still working and sending their children to school. They simply cannot afford housing due to the inflated real estate market. Life goes on, but their standard of living suffers severely. The stereotype of the homeless single male is truly discredited in this instance. We are talking about entire families living a homeless lifestyle. This is evidenced by faded-plastic toys and other playthings strewn in piles outside the tents. 

Then there are the veterans. Of the 107,000 homeless veterans living in the United States, approximately 1,500 of them are living in Hawaii. The unemployment rate for veterans living in the US is 11.7% as of December 2010. Compound this with the effects of PTSD or substance abuse and it is not hard to understand why many veterans end up trapped in the limbo of a homeless society. It is more challenging now than ever, for veterans to reenter the civilian world. And it is reprehensible that 89% of veterans have received honorable discharges from the Armed Forces, have sacrificed themselves body and soul for war, yet still find themselves displaced in this country. Tragically, the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will only cause the number of homeless veterans to increase over time. 

Here are the photos. This particular tent city is about 30 miles north-west of Honolulu, far enough away from the eyes of tourists for local government to really care, but undoubtedly visual attestation of the travesties of colonization and war. 

Sources:

http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/Global/story.asp?S=13482761

http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/Global/story.asp?S=13815580

http://www.hawaiihomeproject.org/homelesshawaii.html

http://www.nchv.org/background.cfm

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/10/14/60minutes/main6958101.shtml

A few more notes on food and decoration:

1. The Food—I made everything from scratch, except for the macarons. Please see Part I of this post for some recipes:

  Crudites and crackers with artichoke hummus and jajik

  Fruit salad (my daughter’s favorite)

  Bags of Annie’s Bunny Snacks, labeled with “Eat Me”

  Chicken salad and cucumber tea sandwiches

  Petit fours

  Iced sugar cookies

  Macarons

  Funfetti cake with ice cream

  Chocolate cupcakes with buttercream frosting

  Lemonade, sparkling cider, bottled water, and lots and lots of hot tea.

2. The Mad Hatter’s Table:

I found paper lanterns on Asianideas.com com for $1-$2 each and we strung them up using kitchen twine.

We rented the tables and chairs from the Outdoor Recreation center on base for under $20. Then we covered everything with inexpensive table and chair covers. We tied more tulle around the chair backs for color.

I collected/borrowed used throw pillows and scattered them randomly     on different chairs to make it feel cozy and to let the kids sit up a bit higher at the table. 

The Tulgey Wood signs I got from kutekardz on Etsy. 

So here’s how it all came together:

*Photos by Jessica Yahn have imbedded links. Please click for more details.

This blog post has been a long time coming. I will post it in two parts since there are quite a few photos.

So here it is, Part I of my daughter’s Alice in Wonderland birthday party—The planning stage. This took me about a month and a half to put together. 

My inspiration:

The 1951 Golden Book edition of Alice in Wonderland, illustrated by Al Dempster. My goal was to recreate this scene with Victorian influence from the original Tenniel illustrations and a bit of Mary Blair whimsy thrown in.

I spent a lot of time in thrift stores, hunting for mismatched teapots, cups, glasses, and plates. This centerpiece I created using 2 teapots and a vintage coffee pot that was missing a lid. I attached everything using silicone aquarium glue. Then I sprayed the flowers and fauna with gold glitter spray to give the whole thing dimension.  

I picked up the hummingbird and butterfly at Ben Franklin. 

I created stacked sculptures using glass bottles, teacups, saucers and a lone creamer. Again, I used silicone adhesive to assemble these. The flowers I pulled from a used arrangement I found at Goodwill. More birds and butterflies from Ben Franklin. 

Tiered serving platters. All repurposed using glasses, plates, candlesticks and random crockery from thrift stores. I used aquarium silicone adhesive again—I needed something food safe, since we would be serving food on these. 

I made all of the paper “drink me/eat me” tags for the party using watercolor paper that I trimmed, distressed and printed on using black ink. Then I punched a hole and thread ribbon through. 

Here are some plastic teacups that I got at Pricebusters. I think I paid about $1.50 for a sleeve of 8. I decorated them with stickers, curling ribbon, and star garland to dress them up a little. 

Bubbles! I bought a bunch of these bottles at the Post Exchange. The stickers are actually Hershey kiss labels that I got on ebay—a sheet of 100 for $3.50.

Labels from ebay. The flamingo straws I got on summer clearance, 12 for $2 at Pier1. 

I found these flower-shaped lollipops on sale at Longs Drugs (Hawaii’s version of CVS). 

Ha! These are my daughter’s play chairs. I just tied them up with tulle and star garland. 

We set up a hat-making station at the party. These accordion hats I got at Discount School Supply. I decorated this one, couldn’t help myself! We also made newspaper sailor hats and I picked up some basic-colored cone party hats at the Post Exchange. Then we used stickers, glitter glue, pom poms, feathers, markers, crepe paper, etc. to decorate. 

I wanted the children to feel as if they were like tiny Alice, wandering in the garden. So I created these oversized flowers using tissue paper, crepe paper, bamboo garden stakes, and pipe cleaners. 

Petit fours. You need a nice, firm pound cake to make these. I used this recipe because I knew the cream cheese would still lend a moist cake. I cut the pound cake loaves into 1” squares and brushed them with warmed and strained orange marmalade to create an adhesive surface for the fondant. Then I covered the squares with poured fondant and decorated them with icing flowers, edible butterflies, and sanding sugar to give the surface some sparkle. The fluted liners are from Sweet Estelle’s on Etsy. 

“Eat Me” cookies. I used my Grandmother’s sugar cookie recipe. It’s a Betty Crocker Recipe from 1961 and can’t be beat. I iced the cookies using a corn syrup-based recipe for an opaque look. The frosting I used for the writing is the classic Wilton buttercream icing. I used sugar pearls to accent and to add some texture. 

The most fantastic cake ever! Sprinkle Bakes’ Sprinkle Cake recipe. It’s a homemade buttermilk funfetti cake. Amazing. I purchased most of the sprinkle decos at ShopBakersNook.com. I had a hard time finding the licorice allsorts in Hawaii, but I finally found them at Ross, of all places. We served this with homemade pumpkin (It was Halloween weekend.) and nutella ice creams. 

Had to have some cupcakes. These are chocolate with the same Wilton buttercream frosting that I used for the cookies. I handmade the “Eat Me” signs using watercolor paper, toothpicks, ribbon, and a little bit of gold glitter glue. 

*STAY TUNED FOR PART II*

Early morning in Connecticut. I stand at the edge of the porch, camera in hand, my slippers steeped in shards of ice. This is how it must feel to be suspended in a snow globe. Viscerally, I am reminded of the ice-palace in Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago. What’s its name? 

Varykino. Now I remember. 

Varykino, the Siberian house that Yuri and Lara escape to, where Yuri writes his “Lara” poems.

I take my photo quickly and jump over the doorsill, back into the house. 

David Lean, in his 1956 film adaptation of Pasternak’s novel, recreates the Varykino house using frozen beeswax and flaked marble. The icicles hanging from the chandelier, the layers of sparkling snow that resemble years of dust; How can something seem so lifeless yet so magical at the same time?

Consider this poem, written by Pasternak in 1956, the same year he attempted to publish Doctor Zhivago:

Snow is Falling 

Snow is falling: snow is falling.
Geranium flowers reach
for the blizzard’s small white stars
past the window’s edge.

Snow is falling, all is lost,
the whole world’s streaming past:
the flight of steps on the back stairs,
the corner where roads cross.

Snow is falling: snow is falling,
not snowflakes stealing down,
Sky parachutes to earth instead,
in his worn dressing gown.

As if he’s playing hide-and-seek,
across the upper landings,
a mad thing, slowly sneaks,
Sky creeps down from the attic.


It’s all because life won’t wait,
before you know, it’s Christmas here.
And look, in a minute,
suddenly it’s New Year.

Snow is falling, deeper – deeper.
Maybe, with that same stride
in that same tempo,
with that same languor,

Time’s going by?

Year after year, perhaps,
passing, as snow’s falling,
like words in a poem?
Snow’s falling: snow’s falling.
Snow is falling, all is lost –
the whitened passers-by,
leaves’ startled showing,
the corners where roads cross.

Time does not stop for snow. But snow stops, or at least slows, our actions within time. That is the magic, the illusion. Varykino was a haven for Lara and Yuri, a place away from political upheaval, and a place in time and space where they could be together. We can all hide away in our own Varykinos, at least until the snow and the magic melt. In the end, however, we can’t deny the real world buried beneath the ice. Eventually, we have to face it. 

Look into the future. Gone are the wasteful McMansions of the world. In their place, tiny houses. Efficient, well-built gems of sustainability that are affordable both to purchase and maintain. Their limited space encourages commercial minimalism and simple living.

I could see myself inhabiting one of these. It would be a chance to de-clutter my life and contemplate the relevance of the things that I need versus the things that I desire.

Now I just need to decide between a gypsy caravan, a repurposed caboose, and a tree house. 

*Click on the images for more info*