I am afraid I was unable to benefit from Washington’s Birthday (observed) today, because I have a Tuesday-Friday 7:30-8 AM spot that is just too good to give up. I thought of trying to shift into a Monday-Thursday spot, but even if I’d found one, on Sunday, say, with the same cushy hours, I’d have to go back again on Thursday, so it would still entail two forays, and as long as I’m going out there twice, I might as well go twice to the spot I’m already in, right?
February, of course, is the month of frenetic bogus holidays designed to make up for its being so suicidally depressing. Last Friday, February 15th, was Susan B. Anthony’s birthday. The great women’s suffragist got her start as a temperance booster, so her party is a dry one. A glance at the pictures of Susan B. Anthony on the World Wide Web will make you realize that it took a formidable woman to campaign successfully for the Nineteenth Amendment, which gave women the right to vote. (It was added to the Bill of Rights in 1920, fourteen years after Susan B. Anthony’s death.) I looked in vain for any reference to our heroine in the Times or in the speeches of, say, Hillary Rodham Clinton. Can it be? Is it possible that just as Senator John McCain has to steer clear of George W. Bush so as not to damage his standing as the Republican candidate for President (in his heart, Bush is probably a Huckabee guy, anyway), Hillary Clinton cannot afford to be associated with a protofeminist? Surely as Washington is the Father of Our Country, Susan B. Anthony is the Mother of Us All. The Empire State Building was lit up in red-white-and-blue for her, anyway. At least, I think it was for her.
3 comments:
I always thought it insulting that the SBAnthony dollar was almost the same size as the quarter. Not to mention that (in my Convenient store clerking days) it made it hard to make change by feel.
I was going to point out that Susan B. Anthony is the only nonmythological female to have her head on a U.S. coin, albeit a damned inconvenient one.
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