If you look at the Unitarian Universalist Historical Society’s online biographical dictionary, you’ll find the name of Mary Rotch. As is true of many of the names listed on the UUHS site, no one has yet written a biography of her. But she is an interesting Unitarian person, and worth knowing more about. Since she attended our church here in New Bedford, I decided to preach a sermon about her life and religious thinking. It’s not quite a real biography, but it does have footnotes and other annotations of interest to UU history geeks. The sermon appears below; scroll way down for the endnotes and other annotations.
Sky
Between one thing and another, I didn’t get outside to take a walk until it was almost four o’clock, and already getting dark. It was windy, and overhead dark clouds were blowing across the sky. As I got down to the waterfront, the sky cleared out in the west, and across the harbor suddenly the town of Fairhaven was all alight, the towers of the Congregational church and Town Hall and the Unitarian church, a big white ferry docked at the Steamship Authority maintenance terminal, all shining bright against the dark clouds. I looked up, and the bottoms of the clouds were being lit up here and there with rosy light. I walked down to Merrill’s Wharf and along the New Bedford side of the harbor all was in shadow, except the smokestack at the old power generation plant, and a big American flag flying over one of the housing projects glowing redly. The light shining on Fairhaven faded out. The clouds overhead glowed orange-pink, then pinkish-gray, then they were just gray. I walked back home, and I could feel the cold air coming in, and I took big deep breaths of it — dry cold air from the north sweeping out the damp, warm, moldy air that has been hanging over the city for days. I could feel myself coming alive again with the new air, and I hoped for snow. It was nearly dark by the time I got home.
“Str8 against H8”
Leona, Amy, and I went up to Boston’s City Hall today so we could join in the “Join the Impact” demonstration against California’s Proposition 8. There were dark clouds, and it looked like rain. As we walked from the Park Street subway station over to city hall, we wondered aloud about how many people might be there. “They’ve got 3,000 on their Facebook page who’ve signed up to be there today,” said Leona. “Yeah, but with the rain I’ll bet it’s half that,” I said, “although there will be people there who forget to sign up, so what, maybe 2,000?” Leona still thought it would be more.
There were a lot of people at City Hall Plaza, more than I expected; and more streaming in every few minutes. Early on, one of the speakers said there were 5,000 people there — but I suspect there were more than that at the peak of attendance. We wound up standing up at the top of the amphitheatre, pretty far from the stage.
Miraculously, the rain held off. Down on the stage, a woman shouted, “Who’s here from Boston?” and all the Bostonians shouted back. She listed off various regions of Massachusetts, and the people who were from those regions shouted back at her. But of course she didn’t mention the south coast (people in Boston don’t even know that we exist), so when she was done and there was a little lull, I shouted, “We’re from New Bedford!” and since I have a really big voice a bunch of people laughed, including the woman on the stage.
About two minutes later, someone touches my arm, and I turn around, and there’s Donald, an old friend. “I thought that loudmouth who shouted had to be you,” he said, grinning. I haven’t seen Donald for years, so we chatted a little bit. He pointed out some of the home-made signs people were holding up: “Don’t Forget Us, Obama!” and “Mormon Families Support Gay Families” and “Str8 against H8” and some others. We both noticed the sign that read, “Hey California, WTF!?”
They had a lot of speakers. Some of them were pretty good. State representative Byron Rushing quoted Frederick Douglass to great effect. Niki Tsongas, congresswoman representing Lawrence and Lowell, was short and to the point. Congressman Ed Markey got the crowd all revved up. The speakers went on for over two hours — maybe a couple too many speakers, and a little bit of live music would have been nice.
But it felt like time well spent. There were events like ours in every state. 5,000 of us turned out in Boston to demonstrate our dismay that California would take away rights that used to be granted under their state constitution. Maybe 6,000 people turned out in Seattle, more than 10,000 turned out in San Diego (those are the only cities the news outlets are reporting right now). With only six days’ notice, thousands of people showed up in front of City Halls nationwide — let’s hope that makes the politicians sit up and take notice.
Rally
About sixty workers and their supporters turned out this evening to attend the meeting of the New Bedford city council. The city councillors were planning to vote on a resolution urging the Eagle manufacturing plant to keep jobs in New Bedford, for as the New Bedford Standard-Times reported yesterday, “The labor union organizing a union drive at Eagle Industries says it has changed tactics and is now trying to keep the South End military apparel plant from potentially leaving New Bedford and taking with it 330 jobs.” Eagle is the company that took over for Michael Bianco, which was the company that hired illegal immigrants to work in sweatshop conditions, and that was shut down by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in March, 2007, in a raid that made national headlines.
Anyway, there we all were tonight, standing around in the chilly dampness in front of City Hall. Zach Lutz, the UNITE HERE! union organizer said a few words, Cynthia Rodrigues from the Central Labor Council named all the unions that were represented — UNITE HERE, Carpenters, SEIU Local 1199, AFT, UWUA, etc. — and I gave the invocation. But the important speakers, the ones we came to hear, were some of the people who work at Eagle Industries. One woman gave specifics of which parts of the factory have been shut down. Another woman told how she had been fired because she was considered disruptive, because she was helping organize the workers. A couple of them spoke in Spanish, while one of their co-workers translated into English. Everyone cheered them after they spoke, and you could see them stand up a little straighter at that — although I suspect those momentary cheers will be small comfort tomorrow when they’re back at work.
The mayor of New Bedford came out of City Hall, and told the crowd that he has contacted both U.S. senators from our state, and our U.S. representative, and they are all committed to making sure all 330 jobs at the Eagle plant stay in the city; then he left quickly for another event. Suddenly someone noticed that one of the supervisors from Eagle, a woman named Dana, was sitting in a parked car watching the rally, keeping an eye on which workers were in attendance. Someone from one of the other local unions (I think he was from the Carpenter’s Union) started chanting, Shame on Dana! and everyone took up the chant for a moment. A guy beside me muttered disgustedly, That’s where our tax dollars go — what he meant was: The only work that the plant gets is from the Department of Defense and they’re using tax dollars from government defense contracts to pay their managers to spy on their workers.
By then it was time to troop upstairs to the Council Chambers. Those who could squeezed in on the main floor, and the rest of us milled around outside the door or slipped upstairs to the balcony. I had to leave early for an event at the church — when I left, everyone was sitting there waiting for the Council meeting to begin, waiting for the city council to resolve to keep jobs in New Bedford, hoping that our city wouldn’t lose another 330 jobs just because the absentee owners of Eagle Industries decide they can get cheaper, more compliant workers at their plant in Puerto Rico.
Congrats to Connecticut…
…because the first legal same-sex marriages took place in Connecticut today. On top of that, it looks like there will be a serious legal challenge to Prop 8 in California, and there is actually a possibility that the process for approving Prop 8 violated the state constitution.
Dream
I drifted up out of sleep this morning still in the middle of a dream. In the dream, I was talking with this woman Sue, a jazz pianist and piano teacher whom I knew a dozen years ago from the church where I was then working.
Nothing really happened in the dream (I think Sue was telling me about ninth chords, which was the sort of conversation we had in real life). Her boyfriend was in the background somewhere, except I think they were married. It was some kind of social event, because there were other people there too.
Even though nothing happened in the dream, it kept reappearing in my consciousness all day long. Every time it popped up, I wondered why. I drove up to Newton for a meeting, and during the hour-long drive I realized that the last time I had spoken to Sue was when I was living in Newton, and she called to say hi — this was in the late spring of 1999 — and before we hung up she told me, “Hey, don’t be a stranger,” but I never called her back. Was the dream about me feeling guilty about not calling back someone who was a peripheral friend? That seemed unlikely.
I went to the meeting, and as we were all heading off one of the people at the meeting, whom I hadn’t seen for a long time, asked about my mother, and I said that she had died nine or ten years ago. Then as I was getting my car I remembered why I never bothered to call Sue back — because in the summer of 1999, my mother was not doing well, and then she died that fall. And then I remembered that my mother died nine years ago yesterday, and I had completely forgotten that fact all day. Except that I hadn’t really forgotten, because that’s what the dream was doing, it was telling me that I really had remembered, and that’s why I had been so distracted all day long. This may sound nonsensical, but the human soul is not governed by linear logic.
Public support of same sex marriage
Join the Impact is organizing a nationwide protest against Proposition 8, the silly ballot question that banned same-sex marriage in California, in reaction to the legalization of marriage in that state. Join the Impact has organized gatherings in cities in every state this Saturday, November 15th, to express our opposition to Prop 8 — check their Web site for locations — including one in Boston at 1:30 p.m.
I’ll be going to the gathering in Boston. The organizers are working on permits for City Hall/Government Plaza, but it’s not finalized yet The organizers have confirmed that City Hall will be the location. Check their blog, or their Facebook event page for latest news.
As the organizers put it: “This is not just a California issue! This is an issue of equality for all Americans!” Even though same sex marriage is legal here in Massachusetts, it would be very good if we could get a large turnout of people across the country to show support for same-sex marriage.
If you can’t go yourself, let all your progressive friends know about this event! (And thanks to Erin for letting me know.)
Sensawonder
“Sensawonder” is a slang term among science fiction fans to refer to that awe-struck sense of wonder you get when contemplating the amazingness of the universe. I’ve been getting my sensawonder fix from following the Phoenix Mars mission over the past few months. In its five months of operations since landing, the Phoenix Mars lander has sent back some amazing observations, including a video of snow descending from Martian clouds, and evidence that there was running water on Mars in the past.
But now the Martian winter is closing in, with shorter daylight, more clouds, and more dust in the atmosphere, with the result that the lander is no longer getting enough power from its solar panels to send or receive radio signals to and from earth. The control team on earth issued a press release on November 3 to say that although they had hoped to get another couple of weeks of weather observations, dust storms were making that seem unlikely. As of today, they are reporting that they haven’t heard from the lander since November 2, making it seem likely that the lander has completely lost power.
The lander was designed to operate for only three months, so the last two months of operation have been a welcome bonus of additional sensawonder for us. Analysis of the data collected over the past five months has barely begun, and we can expect lots of additional science (and more wonder) to come out of the Phoenix Mars mission.
Words
I’ve been noticing some subtle criticism of Barack Obama — criticism that he is a gifted orator.
Wait, being a good speaker is bad? You’re not going to convince this preacher that the spoken word should be suspected. The spoken word has the power to transform people for the better, to inspire them, to move them to give selflessly of themselves to the highest ideals. At least, that’s what we preachers like to think we do (or try to do) when we preach.
Julius Lester puts it this way in his blog:
“To stand in the Lincoln Memorial and read the words of Abraham Lincoln, to stand in the Jefferson Memorial and read the words of Thomas Jefferson is almost a religious experience because their words lift our souls out of the day-to-day and into the realm of the ideals that have shaped our nation, ideals that have been lost, especially over the last eight years.” [Link.]
Amen, amen. Never underestimate the power of the spoken word.