Thoughts on a Train  

Posted by Loren Christie in

There is something liberating about stepping on a train.

In a short seat nestled behind an open car door

I watch the trees fly toward my head

With the complete trust of a child

That I will remain unscathed.


I fly past my home, my roles and responsibilities

And enter into a new world.

The modern-day Athens swallows me whole.

It feels good to be absorbed.

Loren Uses The Secret to Get Out of Jury Duty  

Posted by Loren Christie in ,

It seems like the stars are against me as I attempt to adhere to a jury summons. Besides the fact that I am feeling ill, with a nagging itch in my throat and a slight fever, I am also running late because I cannot find my house keys. My husband is conspiring against me, informing me at the last second that I need to stop at the gas station to put air in one tire. It turns out that my keys are in his pocket, and he is currently on the LIE heading West, the opposite direction from where I have to go today.

"Are you trying to get me jailed for not showing up for a jury summons?" I ask, holding the cell phone on speaker with one hand and stuffing a full box of tissues into my handbag with the other.

There's a pause, and then he answers, laughing, "Well, Yes."

This is how desperate he is to get rid of me when I am sick and grumpy. I snap the phone shut head to Court street.

Somehow I get to the court house on time. The jury waiting room is packed. A propaganda film starring Diane Sawyer is playing on wall-mounted flat screens.

"The early settlers had a barbaric, primitive justice system. Accused suspects were bound at the hands and ankles with thick rope, then thrown into the lake. It was believed that if the person sank, he was guilty."

The camera pans toward toothless peasants hurling a man into the water and grinning. I sit expressionless, silently struggling to keep my mucus in check with Halls cough drops. Thanks to the ever-present Swine Flu threat, my coughing fits clear a whole row of seats.

"Well, if it worked for them, why change it," I mumble, in an effort to sound outlandish and unfit to serve.

My small protest goes nowhere, prompting quiet thumbs up from some people around me, rather than getting me excused. I turn on my Ipod and tune out Diane Sawyer. Today I'm listening to the audiobook The Secret, by Rhonda Byrnes. I know I'm probably the last person on the planet to read this bestseller from 2006, but I've been saving this wicked little volume for a day just like this.

It turns out that The Secret is a very motivational book. Today, with Byrnes' help I plan to harness my energy and bend the Universe! I will start with getting out of this jury selection room, I think.

According to author Rhonda Byrnes, the secret to sucess is strongly linked to the law of attraction. The energy you send out into the Universe is returned to you, and by having an awareness of the power of thought, you can control your future.

"What ever you choose to think will become your life experience," she writes.

The book suggests that the reader start with a small undertaking. So I decide to try to move something in the room. The man seated in front of me has unusual hair. It is very thick on the top, and thin on the sides. I could swear it is a hairpiece. I close my eyes and try to levitate it. I visualize his hair lifting off his head for about five minutes. Nothing happens. I start to laugh which subsequently triggers a sneezing fit. Through the power of germs, I cause the man to turn and offer me a tissue.

Feeling guilty, I abandon my attempt to mentally move his hairpiece and look for other ways to pass the time. My stomach is starting to growl vowel sounds, so I get up and ask the lady at the front of the room if I can leave to eat something.

"Not right now, just wait a few minutes please."

This is a case of deja vu. This same scene happened to me in 1991 in a high school study hall. I sit down and devise an escape plan. The next time the lady calls out names, I will visualize my own disappearance. I will wish myself home like Dorothy in the movie The Wizard of Oz, or Samantha in the television show Bewitched. If that works, I'll clean every room in my house by twitching my nose, (since I'll be on a role at that point).

Ten minutes later the roll call begins. People are grumbling. Lunch break is twenty minutes late and they're calling a new panel of prospective jurors. I close my eyes tightly and smile. I'm thinking positive thoughts...I'm sitting at my kitchen table drinking William Sonoma brand hot chocolate with the big square marshmallows. (I don't skimp in my dreams). The role call ends and the disgruntled group files out of the room. The lady at the front closes the door behind them.

I think, "Maybe we're all going to die now. Oops! I have to retract that thought from the Universe quick! I clamp my eyes shut again and imagine myself pulling the thought up out of the ocean in a giant net."

Then I hear: "I have good news for all of you here. All the juries are selected for today. You all are excused for another six years."

People around me cheer. I open one eye slowly, then the other.

"Oh wow! The Secret works! It really works!" I shout. Bet they won't call me again ever.

Elizabeth Oakes Smith, This Bud's for You  

Posted by Loren Christie in ,


As a 21st century woman living in New York State, there are some situations that I am too spoiled to imagine. While being banned from a voting booth seems offensive, there are other old laws that shock and anger me. People have a lot of varied ideas about the feminist movement. In its infancy it was just as much about human rights as it was about equality of the sexes. I am so grateful to be reaping the benefits of the work of early feminists.

In 1851, while Elizabeth Oakes Smith penned a series of essays titled Woman and Her Needs for the New York Tribune defending the feminist movement, baby steps were being made in securing equal human rights for women. Smith's essays were widely read, and led her to opportunities to lecture on the subject. At that time, Smith's experience as an American woman was vastly different from the modern person. At the core of these essays were her beliefs that:

"It is the making of woman a creature of luxury--an object of sensuality--a vehicle for reproduction--or a thing of toil, each one, or all of these--that has caused half the miseries of the world. She, as a soul, has never been recognized. As a human being to sin and suffer she has had more than an acknowledgement. As a human being to obey her God, to think, to enjoy, men have been blind to her utmost needs. She has been treated always as subservient, and yet all the most entire responsibility has been exacted of her. She has no voice in the law and yet has been subjected to the heaviest penalties of the law. ...Men have written for us, thought for us; and they have constructed from their own consciousness and effigy of a woman to which we are expected to conform."(2)

In the 1850's women in NY state were not granted joint guardianship of their own children; they did not have the authority to will property, or control their own wages. Women could not vote; they had no say in lawmaking, but they could be arrested for breaking laws, and were subjected to capital punishment. Although the first female seminary (college) was opened at Troy by Emma Willard in 1821, girls were typically not encouraged by their families to seek higher education. Society was very much at odds with the feminists, and they were criticized heavily by the media. (1)

Those who chose to speak out for equal rights felt the pressure, but they did not step down from the platform. In an 1852 letter Lucretia Mott wrote,

"It is gratifying as well as encouraging that the author of Woman and Her Needs feels constrained to lift up her voice also on behalf of her sex." (3)

Women and Her Needs was a series of concise persuasive essays calling for a societal change of viewpoint on the intellectual and creative abilities of women. In her writing, Smith suggested that women should be able to pursue their talents and intellectual needs in addition to fulfilling their roles as wives and mothers. She encouraged the pursuit of careers and higher education for women, saying that families raise boys to become self-sufficient and girls to be dependent. Marriage, in this case, becomes a game in which its sanctity is lost. She argued for laws regulating the age of women who marry, explaining that a girl is not mature enough emotionally or intellectually to enter into a life-long contract with a man twice her age. (Smith was married at sixteen in 1822 to a 30 year old man. She had hopes of going to college to become a teacher.)

Smith was pro-divorce in cases where a marriage is arranged for a girl who is not yet of a consenting age, but against divorcing for frivolous reasons. She was anti-capital punishment, believing that women who have no say in law-making should not be executed. She argued that a society that makes women dependent on men keeps them impoverished sometimes financially, and always intellectually. It binds them to the home like children, and leaves them destitute as widows.

In her book Two American Pioneers, Mary Alice Wyman writes that Smith's husband, Seba, had no interest in the women's right's movement and did not approve of his wife's lecture tour on Woman and Her Needs, apparently having written in a letter to his sister in May 1952, "How long this filibustering is to last, Heaven only knows."(4)

Her high intellect and beauty made Smith a sought-after speaker. She lectured for six years after the 1951 publication of Woman and Her Needs. Being different from other early feminists, who seemed plain and stern, made her an odd fit in the group.

When Smith was nominated for the presidency of the Woman's Right's Convention, Susan B. Anthony "balked that Smith, appearing fashionably in a white, somewhat seductive, low-necked sleeveless gown could not represent 'the earnest, solid, hard-working women of this country.' " (5)

It seems that Smith didn't care much about the comments among early feminists about her dress, writing that "a large number of the reformers so called seem to have a spite against everything like refinement and culture."(5)

It was this understanding of fashion and contemporary culture that added to the normalcy of EOS, and made her such a standout. According to Beth Oakes, a great-grand-daughter of Smith who grew up hearing family stories of EOS, women "loved her" and her writing. In his book Mid-century America: life in the 1850's, Carl Bode writes "though a feminist, she was also feminine."

I think this stylish quality is one of the most intriguing things about Smith's character. It makes her bolder, in a sense, for not blending into the stodgy crowd of feminists. Despite the popularity she enjoyed for many years, it seems that Smith fell into obscurity in her old age. The feminist movement shifted, and for some reason she was not remembered like Mott, Stanton, and other leaders. In a Jan 15, 1887 entry in her diary, Smith wrote,

"I suppose I am an old fool to expect to be remembered..."(6)

I am still trying to figure out why she is not a household name. Where would modern American women be without the voices of the early feminists, including Elizabeth Oakes Smith? I don't like to imagine it. A tall glass of "thank you" is in order.


Footnotes:
1. statistics from The Brooklyn Eagle, August 25, 1915
2. Woman and Her Needs, No. II. by Elizabeth Oakes Smith for the Tribune, (Novemember 30, 1850)
3. Letter from Lucretia Mott, Box 1 F.3 MSS. & Archives Section N.Y.P.L.
4. Wyman, Mary Alice. Two American Pioneers. p. 193
5. Letter to John H. Hesbreck Esqur. Oct. 15 1853. Box 1. F.6b. -
MSS. & Archives Section N.Y.P. L.
6. Cool old leather-bound Diary! Jan 1-Dec.3 1887. Box 1. F.7 MSS. & Archives Section N.Y.P.L.
Image of EOS is from T. Scherman's website.

Fall 2009 MaMaZina Column  

Posted by Loren Christie in

Check out my updated column about my parenting adventures at MaMaZina:
http://www.momwriterslitmag.com/Circus.htm

Gratitude List  

Posted by Loren Christie in ,

It's important to take time out to be mindful of the blessings in life. This week, as always, I am thankful for family, friends, health, etc. I came across this gratitude prayer today that I'd like to share with you.

My Help, My Hope Psalm 121

I lift my eyes to you
my help, my hope
the heavens (who could imagine?)
the earth (only our Lord)
the infinite starry spaces
the world's teeming breadth
All this. I lift my eyes
-upstart, delighted-
and I praise.

-Daniel Berrigan SJ

Tell me what you are thankful for...

Loren, This is Your Life...

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