What has happened this week?

Is Winter Ending?

Well, no, winter isn’t ending. We’ve had a bit of better weather but also some bitter weather. We took a walk under cloudy skies, but heard a Red-Winged Blackbird singing. At our house we are having a very quiet time, also pondering the rapid and increasingly alarming political and international scene in our national government. Not much to share with Deb’s Readerbuzz and her Sunday Salon on the weekend, but here it is!

Dreaming of summer and walks along the Huron River.

We cooked a bit, and had a few ready-made meals.

We shopped at the locally famous Zingerman’s Deli, and bought rye bread, salads, corned beef, and pastrami for sandwiches.

Now for my reading this week…. 

Sojourner Truth and Human Rights

The struggle to free the enslaved black people in the United States in the 19th century and the parallel and combined struggle throughout that century to endow men and women of all races with full rights of citizenship, property ownership, and voting, was a long and painful one. Sojourner Truth, who was born in slavery at the end of the 18th century, was a major figure in this struggle. She became a figure of legendary proportions, and in fact, her reputation depends on several anecdotes that were much embellished from the original events in which she participated.

Both the actual struggles, the political participation, and the myths of Sojourner Truth seem especially important now. As I have been reading about her life, I’m thinking about the horrifying way that the successes of that struggle are being reversed in our new political scene right now, this week, today.

Sojourner Truth’s Narrative tells how she was born in a Dutch community in New York, where slavery was less widespread than in the South, but where many Africans were held in bondage until New York ended legal slavery in 1827. Her narrative describes how she was enslaved until she was approximately thirty years old. She details her relationship with her owners, her family, and other people. She describes her religious development as a Pentecostal Christian, relationships with the preachers and leaders who influenced her, and her participation in various religious organizations and congregations. As she participated in many high-profile events of her time, she was conscious of her legend, and contributed in a positive way to being a leader and a proponent of human rights, freedom from slavery, and women’s suffrage.

The Narrative of Sojourner Truth was widely read throughout her life.

As the century progressed, antislavery activists conveniently forgot about Northern slave owners as they pursued the struggle to end slavery in the South. Thus Sojourner Truth’s origins were often forgotten, and she was sometimes thought to have been born on a Southern plantation rather than on a small-scale Northern farm where the language was Dutch, and where she would never have had the Southern accent that’s popularly associated with her. 

This association is especially strong with her most famous speech, delivered at a very early women’s suffrage meeting. You’ve probably heard the refrain of this speech known by the repetition of the words: “Ain’t I a woman.” These words were not reported at the time the speech was given, but were invented by a later proponent of women’s rights.  However, this legendary version of Sojourner Truth’s speech is so widely accepted that the author of the careful biography that I read feels it will never be corrected.

Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol by Nell Irvin Painter.

What did Sojourner Truth stand for? Even her “Narrative” was the work of a white woman who took down her oral history because Sojourner Truth herself was unable to to read or write. In fact, Nell Irvin Painter’s biography summarizes it: “Everything we know of Sojourner Truth comes through other people, mostly educated White women.” (p. 207)

Painter’s book is fascinating, and very revealing about pre-Civil War attitudes and cultural stereotypes about the relationship of Black and White Americans, and the co-development of views on race and on slavery. Here is the passage that makes me tremble in fear that we are losing the progress that was made in that era and many subsequent eras when it comes to the rights of women, minorities. and non-white people:

 

“Women’s rights meant empowering women in a multitude of ways: securing women rights to their wages, their inheritance, and the custody of their children; admitting women to institutions of higher learning and the professions; and permitting women to vote, hold office, and serve on juries. This broad agenda dovetailed with the needs of Black people, who also lacked a wide range of civil rights.” (p. 261)

An article in the New York Times titled “Republican Men and Women Are Changing Their Minds About How Women Should Behave” summarized a number of recent studies:

“Surveys from 2024 show that support for traditional gender roles is increasing. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this is happening primarily among Republicans. Perhaps more surprisingly, it is happening among Republican women as well as among Republican men.”

Women being sent back from employment to stay home? Women being shut out of active high-level politics? In the most backward (but powerful) circles even questions of whether married women should be allowed to vote? 

That’s just one example: many news stories have been detailing extreme racism in the firing of high government officials and many overtly racist and anti-woman statements made by the incoming and less qualified replacements. What will become of us? 

We need another distraction…

Another Distraction

What would you think about a few cute bunny images? Again, I’ve looked at the work of the amazing artist Hokusai from 19th century Japan. Here are a few pictures by him and by one of his students to share with Eileen’s Saturday Critters.

Dreaming of Spring

At the Peony Garden in June a few years ago.

 Blog post © 2025 mae sander