I
didn’t notice what the date was when I got up this morning, and just
wore the same thing I wore yesterday, which happened to be an “It’s easy
being green” t-shirt with a frog on it, so I didn’t get pinched. The
little Irish that I am, on my father’s side, is the orange kind, not the
green, but I like a lot of traditions that aren’t my own. For me, March
17 is more than St. Pat’s day, however. It’s the anniversary of my
mother’s death, in 1978, from pancreatitis. Which they haven’t found a
cure for yet.
Watched Harlan County USA
last night on DVD checked out from the library. There’s a wonderful old
Irishman in it reminiscing about going into the mines at the age of ten
and going on strike with the other breaker boys (who sorted the slate
out of the stream of coal going by) and winning a few pennies more per
hour. It’s an incredible documentary of persistence, violence and
solidarity as miners struck in the early nineteen-seventies for the
right to unionize and get safer working conditions. Full of really
determined women—the miner’s wives and widows. Now I hear there are as
many women as men in the mines, but there were none at all then. The
film made me nostalgic for the good old days when there were stronger
unions, however bitter the struggle was.
Last
Friday I went to one of the many demonstrations in support of the
teachers being pink-slipped for lack of state and federal support for
education. Their union was there, and parents with kids, and a brass
band.
Photo by Alejandro Stewart.© 2009 by Nancy Schimmel
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
BEING GREEN
