Four Strong Women of the Distant Past

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During Wone’s Herstory Week, I would like to share some of my favorite very historical women with you, all role models for 21st century feminist seeking to reclaim their heritage.  Two of them you most certainly have heard of and the other two, maybe not.  In chronological order, they are Boudicca, Hypatia, Eleanor of Aquitaine and Joan of Arc, or in her native French, Jeanne d’Arc.

Boudicca was queen of the Iceni, a Celtric tribe of western Britain during Roman rule, born in 60 or 61 CE.  Her husband had signed a will leaving his kingdom half to his widow and half to Rome.  Rome wasn’t satisfied.   In fact, they expressed their dissatisfaction by raping Boudicca’s daughters and flogging the queen in public. Outraged, Boudicca raised an army, captured Londinium (London), and defeated the Roman army a second time before losing the third and final battle.  She took poison rather than being paraded through Rome and being thrown to the lions.

Hypatia was a scholar, an astronomer, mathematician and philosopher who taught and wrote and studied in “Alexandria, Egypt in the late 4th and early 5th centuries before the fall of Rome. It was extremely rare for a woman to be found in such an exalted scholarly role. Although she was a pagan, she had cordial relations with the Christians and taught both pagan and Christian students.  She was renowned as a teacher. In March 415, she was attacked and murdered by a band of angry Christians.

Our second queen was Eleanor of Aquitaine, born in 1124 CE. She was first married to the dauphin of France and, after annulment, to Henry II of England, Henry was 11 years younger than Eleanor. It was a stormy marriage. He spent much time abroad fighting and she took care of the kingdom and her eight children in his absence.  When he returned, she supported an unsuccessful attempt by her sons to overthrow their father. Outraged, Henry imprisoned Eleanor for 15 years until his death in 1189. She returned to her ancestral lands of Aquitaine and lived there until her death in 1206, the only one of the four to die a natural death.

Joan of Arc was born in 1412 CE in the little French town of Domremy.  A17-year-old peasant girl, she heard voices telling her to go to the aid of the uncrowned  French king Charles VII. She put on armor and set off  to meet the king, who believed her story and sent her to lead the French army against the Burgundians, French allies of the invading English. The King must be crowned in Orleans.  Defeating the Burgundians, she accompanied Charles to his coronation.  However, things took a turn for the worst, and in a subseuqnt battle she was captured by the Burgundians, who forced her to wear women’s clothing, tried her for  heresy, and burned her a the stake in the town of Rouen at the tender age of 19. Her Hershey conviction was later overturned. The patron saint of France, Joan was canonized by the Catholic church in 1920. The second Sunday in May (Mothers’ Day in the United States) is dedicated in France to honoring the nation’s patron saint.

As I watched NCAAW basketball playoffs this week, I hope the young women who played so well know that they come from log line of strong, brave, accomplished women who made a difference in the world.

Celebrate the Women

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March is Women’s History month, a practice started in the United States in 1897 and joined by Australia (starting in 2000), Canada, the United Kingdom, Russia, Hungary and Ukraine. We do have to share the month with the spring equinox and Saint Patrick’s Day, but it’s still a good time to recall a little “herstory” as we celebrate the women who made a difference in significant ways.  Before we do that, however, I want to remind you of a practice that has help to hide or erase history, and that is the common practice of women changing their last name to their husband’s. Remember the old song about “I’ll be with you in apple Blossom time ,I’ll be with you to change your name to m…,” The name change was for a long time just the tip of the iceberg.  Married women were the property of their husbands, who also owned the kids, her assets, her earnings. As they sing in the musical “Suffs”, a women dies when she gets married. She has ceased to exist as a separate person.

 Most of that changed since the suffragists caught the car they were chasing for 72 years and climbed in the back seat in 1920, but the name change is still a widely common practice in more recent years. I changed my name in 1962.  Two of my daughters did the same in 1993 and 1994, and in 2022 so did one of my grandchildren. My oldest daughter who still lives in our hometown told me only partly in jest that her decision to change her name was not only to acquire a name that was easier to spell and pronounce than Ulbrich but also one that would keep her from always being identified with her somewhat outspoken, activist mother.

There is also the challenge of connecting children to both parents, which is easier if the parents share a last name. Hyphenation is an awkward solution, especially in subsequent generations. What last name would you give to the offspring of Joseph Hall- Berwyck and Annabelle Shultz-Foster?   Where do we go next?

But now there is a new reason to NOT change your name.  If you want to be able to vote, get a credit card in your own name, get a passport, or a variety of other things you just might want to do, it is a whole lot simpler for you to do like your brother or your son or your spouse and just say, “This is me. I was named Susan Smith on the day I was born and I’m keeping that name till I die.  No, dear, it doesn’t mean I don’t love you.  But how can I love someone else if I don’t love myself enough to affirm separateness in togetherness?

Having a clear record of name changes since birth is pretty important.  Especially if you married and divorced and changed your name again.   had a grandmother whose name was Gladys Lillian Barber Hewitt Schultz Rockefeller. She carried her whole marital history on her shoulders.

Norse culture had a solution of sorts to the dilemma of family identification and the right to one’s own name.  If Susan Ingridsdottir and John Larson married, their male children would have the last name Johson and their female children would bear the surname Susansdottir. Only siblings of the same gender would share a surname .It might work in a small culture, but probably not in one as large and diverse as ours. And it relies too much on first names which results in a smaller pool of surnames.

So there is a simple solution.  Here’s your name, kid.  My infant great grandchild). .Mabel Kay Didio, bears her father’s surname. At age three weeks, she has no opinion, but she might develop one.  Got a problem with it?  Complain to your parents or hire a lawyer and change it, just like a movie star. Or find a husband with a last name you like better.   But don’t expect the Board of Elections to trust you unless you go through all those papers around the house to provide proof of name when you want to exercise your duty and privilege of choosing the people who run your country.

In subsequent blogs, I am going to offer brief bios of a selection of female heroines I especially admire for defying convention and/or making a significant impact on the course of human evenes..  I invite you to share your own.  Next installment: will feature ancient and medieval women I admire—Hypatia, Boudicca, Joan of Arc, Eleanor of Aquitaine.

Giving it Up for Lent

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I grew up Protestant in a largely Catholic town.  The Catholics looked like they were having more fun.  Some of them went to mass every day, and they had lots of special days.  One of the practices that struck my fancy was giving up something for the forty days of Lent. All my friends would talk about what to give up. Come Ash Wednesday, they would get ashes on their foreheads and commit themselves to some sacrifice.  Usually it was something like snacks, or ice cream.  They got Sundays off.

My fascination with this exotic religion, compared to my quiet Congregationalism, faded in time, but the idea of giving something up for Lent did not. Catholicism was not a requirement for this particular spiritual practice. Many years I would give up potato chips, or chocolate.  Later as an adult I would give up wine.  I also added a positive dimension, to do something in honor of the season of reflection.  I had a lot of windows, even if they didn’t quite add up to the forty required. I washed one every day.  The glass doors didn’t stay clean, so they filled in the missing days.

This year Lent begins with Ash Wednesday on February 19th. I am returning to my giving up practice, but to add depth and meaning to it, The practice has to be hard and must serve some greater good. Being an economist, I think of my spending and investing and charitable giving as ways to embody my commitment to social justice in all its forms.  I am unhappy that some of the places I shop have enabled antidemocratic behavior by our president, so I explored what firms might be an appropriate target. 

I found lists on the top enablers internet, but quickly eliminated those I have no connection to.them. Don’t own their stock, don’t shop there much. Only three were consumer-oriented. My candidate list narrowed to three: amazon, Walmart, and Home depot.  I patronize Lowe’s rather than Home Depot because it’s closer, so no meaningful potential for action there. That left me amazon and WalMart.

I shop a lot at amazon, for books, clothing, household items, gifts. It won’t be easy, but if it were easy, why bother? So that’s my commitment. No shopping at amazon.  Even on Sundays.

You may not find Lent appealing, or amazon as your choice. but let this blog invite you to consider what firms you are subsidizing in their antidemocratic public policy.  Not all humans are primarily self-interested, but most business corporations are. If enough people boycott them and let the firm know what and why, we of the comfortable  class (as opposed to the oligarch class and the barely hanging on class) can use our spending power (or withhold it) to make a difference. If you want to take a second and third step, do write the company you are giving up for Lent and why.  And encourage your friends to do likewise. Together, we make a difference.

Unexpected Presidents

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Somehow another paean to the god presidents Washington and Lincoln did not speak to me. As I was casting about, a friend suggested that my Presidents’ Day blog focus on those who rise to the office because of the death of the president. There are seven, which is too big a crowd, so I picked three in the 20th century—Teddy Roosevelt, Truman, and LBJ. Two succeeded an assassinated president, and one a followed a president who was known to be at death’s door when he was inaugurated. All three had some remarkable accomplishments.  The “rejects?”  Presidents John Tyler, Andrew Johnson, Chester Arthur, and Calvin Coolidge. After his one incomplete term, Tyler (a slave owner) served in the Confederate legislature. Andrew Johnson was a Confederate sympathizer who barely survived impeachment and did not seek re-election. Serving a single term president, Chester Arthur’’s main legacy was civil service reform after Garfield was shot by a disappointed federal job seeker.

My three choices were all sufficiently successful to be elected on their own after their predecessor’s term expired. (Also true of Calvin Coolidge, but he wasn’t particularly memorable otherwise).

Teddy Roosevelt (for whom the teddy bear is named) succeeded William McKinley shortly after he had begun his second term. McKinley was shot by an anarchist.  Roosevelt, at age 42 the youngest person to ever serve as president, was best known for his love of the outdoors that led to National parks and conservation measures, and for a strong anti-monopoly policy after the excessive accumulation and concentration of power and wealth in the Gilded Age.

Harry Truman, a little-known Senator from Missouri, shocked the world in 1945 by dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to hasten the end of the war. He played a major world role in the postwar period that included the Marshall plan for European recovery, NATO as a shield against Russia, the creation of the World Bank and the international Monetary Fund. A southerner, he is celebrated for integrating the U.S. military. Truman was a determined and energetic campaigner in 1948, earning the nickname “Give ‘em hell, Harry” on his whistlestop campaign, castigating that “do nothing 88th Congress” or not passing any of his legislative proposals.

Lyndon Johnson was at heart a legislator, and is remembered for his great legislative successes—the Voting Rights Act, the civil Rights Act, Medicare and Medicaid., and food stamps  These were truly giant steps in addressing racism and poverty. 

Abe and George will not mind sharing the limelight. So I will be toasting Teddy, Harry, and Lyndon on President’s Day.  I invite you to pick your own, check him out (only males at this point) and sing his praises. It’s a tough job.  It deserves a day of thanks.

Susan B. Anthony and the League of Women Voters

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A group of women gathered in Seneca Falls in 1848 to begin the long march toward entitling women to their right to vote, which was implied but not spelled out in the constitution. It took 72 long years to pass and ratify the 20th amendment acknowledging (not “giving”) women’s right to the vote (And those women were suffragists NOT suffragettes!). Susan B. Anthony, was one of the leaders in that movement, although she didn’t live long enough to see their work come to fruition. Her birthday was February 15th. It is also the birthday of the organization that was the culmination of the suffrage movement.

By early 1920, the momentum for ratification was there. Congress had passed the proposed 20th amendment, and it had been ratified by a number of states, edging closer to 36 (3/4 of the then 48 states). .  Jeanette Rankin was already serving in Congress, casting the lone vote to oppose entry into the Great War. Even before the amendment was ratified the following August, many states had already assented to the right of women to vote. In those states, women were eager to learn about how and where and when to vote and how to use their votes to bring about positive change

Women in states where they could vote began to organize themselves into groups to educate women about voting, and advocating, and understanding the issues that entered into their decisions about who deserved their vote. The League of Women Voters began with four interconnected goals.  First, it wanted to see the ratification process to its finale. Second, they wanted to protect and extend the vote, to get people registered and figure out how to vote.  Third, they wanted people, not just women, to be informed voters who knew what those elected people were doing in city councils and state capitals and Washington DC and how those actions would affect their lives and the lives of their fellow Americans. Finally, they wanted them to be engaged between elections, contacting their legislators and telling them how they wanted their elected representatives to vote, and why they should vote that way. 

Their role, as facilitators of the election process, getting people registered and to the polls, helping them find out who was running as they decided to how to vote, was half the mission the first two goals. That role required that the be neutral arbiters of the process, which meant nonpartisanship.   The other half, which is the part that gets the League caught in the political crossfire, is advocacy. Advocacy meant picking issues, studying them, decided where they as individuals and as the League stand  on issues ranging from balanced budgets to ranked choice voting to reproductive choice to clean air and water. League advocates try very hard to be informed and articulate about the issues they care about.

I have an understandably personal interest in this organization. My great-grandmother marched for women’s suffrage. My mother was a political junkie to her dying day. I am a life member and “founding mother” of my local League which I served numerous times as president as well as four years as o-president of my state League.

For the first hundred years, League managed to keep those two roles balanced and was a trusted source of information to both the public and elected officials.  But partisanship is more intense in the 21st century, and the League’s positions are more often close to that of one party than the other.

Increasingly, some elected officials and candidates try to dismiss or ignore this faithful custodian of democratic process (with a small d) by boycotting candidate events, refusing to supply information about themselves as candidates and ignoring the League’s input on pending legislation or other actions. . Both political parties refused to continue the longtime practice of League-sponsored presidential debates, although candidate forums continue to be a popular service at the state and local levelsThere is clearly a tension between those two roles, the neutral guardian of process and the advocacy for particular outcomes.

Both the safeguarding of elections and the encouragement and practice of informed advocacy are essential to restoring our democracy. As we look beyond 2026 and 2028, the League will be ready to play a leading role in making that happen.

,

Heartless Capitalism Revisited

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Some fifty years ago, I wrote a column for the local newspaper on Heartless Capitalism to run on Valentine’s day.  Faculty in the economics department at Clemson University took turns writing columns once a week.  I told Russell, our coordinator, that I would like to write a column for Valentine’s Day with the title Heartless Capitalism. “What’s it about?” he asked. “I don’t know yet, ”I replied. It turned out endorse a popular theme in political economy of that era, presaging Ronald Reagan as well as the movie Wall street in which Gordon Gecko proclaims that greed is good.

My argument was based on the basic focus of economics, efficiency. In a world of scarce resources and unlimited wants, economists bow at the altar of efficiency.Efficiency means accomplishing the most (output, enjoyment, satisfaction, etc.) our of our available resources OR spending the smallest amount of resources in order to achieve a given outcome.  We taught our students that the goals of microeconomics were efficiency, equity, and freedom, but really only efficiency mattered, We could demonstrate how efficiency was attained with graphs and equations. 

Efficiency is not really a goal, more a way of attaining a goal, which is MORE—economic growth.Moreover, efficiency depends on greed as a motivator.. One way to be more efficient—to get more “stuff” out of your available inputs—is to use relatively more of resources that are abundant and less of the resources that are scarce., because abundant resources are cheap and scarce resources are expensive When land is scarce, we cultivate by methods that focus on yields per acre. When copper is scarce, we substitute other materials. when capital is scarce we use less capital and more labor. And so on. You get the picture. That is how economist’s explain the statement that greed is good. If greed is abundant and altruism is scarce, why not harness the abundant resource of greed to produce more output or produce it at lower cost? 

“Greed is good” became the mantra of  many economists as way to create and sustain economic growth. Greed is good weas a necessary condition for the implied goal, more is better.   I never went that far.  I had read Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful (!973). Much latter, I read Alan Blinder’s 1990 book Hard Heads, Soft Hearts in which he argued that the Republicans were the party of hard heads, hard hearts and the Democrats were the party of soft heads, soft hearts, What we really needed was hard heads, soft hearts. Efficiency is about hard heads. Equity about soft heads, caring about others, compassion, or altruism. Greed is a powerful motivator, but altruism needs to keep it in check.

Both greed and altruism are learned attitudes, embedded in the culture in which one is raised.  Like so many dimensions of life, greed and altruism are not either-or but rather both-and. Greed makes us wealthy. Altruism makes us us better persons and provides us with a world that is more safe, pleasant, and sustainable than greed alone can create.. Greed begets material wealth but at a high unaccounted cost in terms of social relations, equity, and the earth.

As you celebrate this holiday of the heart, listen to both head and heart as you navigate your balance between work and play, being and becoming, giving and getting, earning and caring. Your bottom line needs to be aligned with your lifeline.

Black History Month

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Black History Month succeeded Negro History Month which was established in 1926. Exhibits, readings, displays, and other events remind us of our “favorite” black leaders. Black history gets the shortest month of the year, so we need to celebrate fast. It is followed by Women’s History Month in March and Pride Moth in June, leaving the other nine moths to presumably celebrate Cis-gendered white male contributions to our history.

Although I was born in Connecticut, I have spent most of my adult life in my adopted state of South Carolina.  I teach a short course for the Osher Lifelong Learning Center called “South Carolinians Who Should Be Famous but Aren’t’.” One of my favorites is a black man named Robert Smalls. I learned this story from a colleague in the history department at Clemson University. j was teaching an interdisciplinary honors course on risk and asked Alan Schaffer to give two lectures on great risk takers in history. I don’t remember who the other hero was, but Robert Smalls was unforgettable.

Robert Smalls was born in Beaufort in 1839, the son of a house slave. He grew up with his master’s son as a playmate.  When the master died, Robert became the property of his childhood playmate. They moved to Charleston and Robert was rented out to work on ships.  He was a hard worker and skilled in many tasks, so his master allowed him to marry and have children.  But Robert wanted something more.

The Civil War came, and in 1963, the Union navy blockaded the port of Charleston. The slaves who worked on the ship The Plantation know that the white crew went ashore most nights for rowdy times in the taverns.  Under Roberrt’s leaderships, the black workers hatched a plot. One night, when the white crew members were ashore, the slave crew stowed themselves and their families on the ship and set sail toward the blockading Union ships. Roert knew all the passwords at checkpoints, and having reached close to the Union ships, the crew hauled down the confederate flag and hoisted a white flag of surrender.  Supposedly, his words to the commander of the US. Navy ship were, “Christmas present for Mr. Lincoln.”

The former slaves were welcomed into the Union navy.  Robert Smalls learned to read, write, and navigate.  After the war he returned to Beaufort and served in the state legislature and the U.S. Congress.  While a state legislator, he authored legislation requiring the state to provide free public education for all children, black or white. Even after the end of Reconstruction, he remained active in local politics until his death in 1913.  The main street in the town of Beaufort where he was born is now Robert Smalls Boulevard.

Black History Month

Black History Month succeeded Negro History Month which was established in 1926. Exhibits, readings, displays, and other events remind us of our “favorite” black leaders. Black history gets the shortest month of the year, so we need to celebrate fast. It is followed by Women’s History Month in March and Pride Moth in June, leaving the other nine moths to presumably celebrate Cis-gendered white male contributions to our history.

Although I was born in Connecticut, I have spent most of my adult life in my adopted state of South Carolina.  I teach a short course for the Osher Lifelong Learning Center called “South Carolinians Who Should Be Famous but Aren’t’.” One of my favorites is a black man named Robert Smalls. I learned this story from a colleague in the history department. j was teaching an interdisciplinary honors course on risk and asked Alan Schaffer to give two lectures on great risk takers in history. I don’t remember who the other hero was, but Robert Smalls was unforgettable.

Robert Smalls was born in Beaufort in 1839, the son of a house slave. He grew up with his master’s son as a playmate.  When the master died, Robert became the property of his childhood playmate. They moved to Charleston and Robert was rented out to work on ships.  He was a hard worker and skilled in many tasks, so his master allowed him to marry and have children.  But Robert wanted something more.

The Civil War came, and in 1963, the Union navy blockaded the port of Charleston. The slaves who worked on the ship The Plantation know that the white crew went ashore most nights for rowdy times in the taverns.  Under Roberrt’s leaderships, the black workers hatched a plot. One night, when the white crew members were ashore, the slave crew stowed themselves and their families on the ship and set sail toward the blockading Union ships. Roert knew all the passwords at checkpoints, and having reached close to the Union ships, the crew hauled down the confederate flag and hoisted a white flag of surrender.  Supposedly, his words to the commander of the US. Navy ship were, “Christmas present for Mr. Lincoln.”

The former slaves were welcomed into the Union navy.  Robert Smalls learned to read, write, and navigate.  After the war he returned to Beaufort and served in the state legislature and the U.S. Congress.  While a state legislator, he authored legislation requiring the state to provide free public education for all children, black or white. Even after the end of Reconstruction, he remained active in local politics until his death in 1913.  The main street in the town of Beaufort where he was born is now Robert Smalls Boulevard.

A Torrent of Holidays

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I always like to write about holidays. (A gentle reminder of my book Economics Takes a Holiday!) February began with Imbolc and Groundhog Day, pauses for Superbowl Sunday, then cruises on through Mardi Gras and Ash Wednesday, Valentine’s Day, and Presidents’ Day. Easter and President’s Day are moveable feasts, especially Easter This year Edster falls on April 5th, which moved Mardi Gras and Ash Wednesday back into mid-February. President’s Day always falls between the 15th and the 21st of February, whichever is a Monday. It is also not the ever the birthday of either of the two presidents it was created to honor, Washington and Lincoln.  Fortunately it is not leap year, or the 29th would be Sadie Hawkins Day. 

 This confluence of holidays calls for exceptionally rapid costume changes of emotional attitude. The Superbowl is just six days after groundhog Day and six days before Valentine’s day, eight days before Presidents’ Day, and nine days before Mardi Gras, followed immediately by Ash Wednesday and Lent. two days before Mardi gras, Valentine’s Day coincided with Ash Wednesday, and before we knew it,  Presidents Day. A quick change of pace from a fast-paced, loud, noisy football game watched by millions to a religious holiday marking a season of repentance and reflection interspersed with a celebration of romantic love and ending on a sharp reminder that we are in a very intense and perhaps even ominous election year. From crocuses to Dust Thou art and to dust you shall return to national politics is a lot for our shortest month.  And if you are Chines, you have a New Year’s Day in the mix!

 Unlike the Christmas holidays, each one of these holidays calls for a different kind of emotional response.  Valentine’s Day is lighthearted and sentimental, hearts and chocolate and cards, the only one that calls for spending money. Presidents’ Day is largely an excuse for a day off with banks and post offices closed and most places, no school. Mardi Gras is the final celebratory fling (the carnival, literally meaning farewell to meat) before Ash Wednesday. This holiday calls observant Christians to the austere penitential six weeks of Lent.  Even those of us whose faith traditions didn’t make a big deal out of Lent often feel compelled to join our high church comrades in giving something up for Lent.   Nothing like a holiday the celebrates self-denial. By March 1st, (Internatioanal Friendship Day, we will be in for a good rest with no significant holidays till Saint Patrick’s Day and Ostara, the pagan name for the vernal lequinox.

All these holidays have a common element, however, and that element is hope.  Valentine’s Day was originally a Roman holiday. The name of the month, February, refers to the fever of love. The earth is preparing to be fertile and humans are willing to go along with it by celebrating romantic love, even if it is only by watching the latest season of Bridgerton on Netflix. Renewal of plant and animal life as we all start to emerge from winter’s hibernation is a source of hope.  As the weather warms, we can spend more time outdoors—walking, gardening, coffee on the patio. SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) is banished until November. 

Elections sometimes run on hope, sometimes on fear, most often (this year included) on a mixture of the two.  In a polarized nation, both the hopes and the fears are more intense. Theologian Joanna Macy reminds us that hope is useless unless it is active hope, a spur to invest our efforts in seeking out those candidates who best embody our vision of how our state, local, and federal governments should carry out that visionary hope. We can also hope for the future of our planet by engaging in sustainable lifestyles and inquiring of candidates what they propose to do about growth management and air and water pollution and global warming.

Finally, Mardi Gras and Lent are about letting go, turning one’s back on self-indulgence after one last fling and instead making an effort to cultivate the spirit. (In medieval times, it was also a way to stretch the food supply in the final months before spring crops began to come in.) It is long enough to change, short enough to see the light of Easter at the end of the Lenten tunnel. Just a manageable chunk of time to sustain the hope that by Easter, the holiday of renewal and rebirth, we will be reborn as better, wiser, more patient and less greedy and gluttonous than we were six weeks ago.  That’s a tall order, but we have to start somewhere.

AS we zip through these back-to-back holidays, let us celebrate hope.  Especially the hope that we have transformed into the practice of active hopefulness as we work toward bringing our hopes to fruition. In summer, this season of hope is followed by the season of joy, in autumn the season of wisdom, and in winter a season of rest and recovery. May the hopeful and challenging rhythms of the earth resonate in your body, mind, and soul this spring holiday season.

Groundhog Day 2026

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This is my annual updated version a holiday variously known as the feast of Saint Bridget, Imbolc, Oimelc (both Celtic words related to lambing), and Groundhog Day.  I mentioned that the first of February was the only holiday devoted to housecleaning in an email to my daughter. Aha, she said that explains the backstory for the movie Groundhog Day.  It’s like house cleaning. You clean, it gets dirty, you clean it again, it gets dirty again… A good story line for a movie! At least my repetition, unlike the movie, is only once a year.

Imbolc, Oimelc, or Groundhog Day, all anticipate spring. It is one of the lesser-known cross-quarter holidays on the Wheel of the Year. In addition to Groundhog Day, it survived as the feast of the purification of the virgin (Mary) after the birth of her son 40 days earlier. It is also the day devoted to Saint  Bridget or Brigid. Bridget is the Celtic Triune Goddess in her maiden phase, converted to a Christian saint. The corn maiden from the previous harvest is brought out in her honor as a virgin once again, ready to encounter the Sun King reborn at Yul in a mating ritual of spring.

The purification part of this holiday was known in pre-feminist times as spring house cleaning. In ancient time among the Celts, Imbolc cleaning consisted of removing the Yule greenery from the home and burning it, cleaning up fields and home, and in Ireland, burning old Bridget wheels and making new ones. By Imbolc, most of us have taken down the tree and put away the decorations from Christmas, but if you haven’t, you can use Imbolc as the excuse for delaying it till now.  After Imbolc, you are at risk of being labeled a lazy pagan if you don’t deal of the winter holiday residue.

Imbolc is approaching the end of an indoor time. It’s cold and still pretty dark, but it is the waxing period of light and warmth following the winter solstice. It represents a final stage of wintry inwardness before the crocuses and daffodils invite us to look outward again. But as I write this onjanuary31s, I am looking out at heavy snow, cancellations of all activities for three days, record low temperatures.  What will Punxsutawney Phil think when he pokes his head out in the snow I Pennsylvania this year?and Housebound, we must find our spiritual practice within that space. It is the late stage of the hibernating season as we prepare for the cycle of life to begin again.

Spiritual practice has enjoyed something of a resurgence in recent decades.  A spiritual practice is anything that is centering, mindful, focusing, and connects you to the sacred in a very inclusive sense.  Practicing patience with difficult people is a spiritual practice.  Listening attentively is a spiritual practice.  Eing mindfully is a spiritual practice. Meditation and prayer are traditional spiritual practices in many religions.  But there is also a form of spiritual practice that invests the ordinary activities of daily life with significance by the spirit in which ww carry them out.

The essence of spring housecleaning as spiritual practice blends several Christian and Buddhist ideas.  One is humility; no task is too menial that we are above it, as in Jesus washing his disciples’ feet. The second is mindfulness, to be engaged in the moment, to calm the monkey mind, to focus all our attention on the window being washed or the floor being swept. The third is letting go of attachment to possessions as an encumbrance on our spiritual life, passing them on to another use or another user. The spiritual practice of spring housecleaning can incorporate all three.

Housecleaning means two different things.  One is the emphasis on clean, as in wash windows, polish furniture, remove cobwebs, paint, scrub floors, clean woodwork, dust the books. That’s both the humble and the mindful part.  In the words of one contemporary Buddhist writer, “after enlightenment, the laundry.” The other kind of housecleaning is to declutter, simplify, recycle, let go of possessions no longer needed, like the greens from Yul in the Celtic tradition.  That’s the letting go part. 

For many years my Lenten practice, for the forty days that begin sometime after Imbolc and stretch to the floating holiday of Easter, was to wash a window every day.  Then I moved to a smaller house, which taxed my ingenuity to find forty windows.  I included car windows, TV and computer screens, mirrors.  Friends helpfully offered their windows, but I did not wish to discourage their own spiritual practice.   There is something very satisfying, very symbolic in letting the light of the returning spring shine through a clean window, but it means more when it’s my window. 

A friend described a similar cleaning ritual, only she does it all on New Year’s Day.  She takes each of her many books down one at a time off the shelf, dusts it (and the shelf), and decides whether it stays or goes.  If books are a rich and meaningful part of your life, revisiting these old friends and deciding what role they still may play in your life and which ones should be shared with others is definitely a spiritual practice.  This particular ritual embodies both humility (dusting). mindfulness (concentrated attention on the books and the memories and teachings they hold) and letting go (books to be passed on). This year, I enlisted my granddaughter and her boyfriend, both book lovers, to help me to choose which ones they wanted and cart the rest to a newly discovered (to me) used bookshop in Anderson.

So, as the daffodils and crocuses pop their leaves through the snowy ground, as the groundhog in Punxatawny ponders his forecast, we can prepare to emerge from the hibernating season by renewing the spaces we inhabit. Like the bluebirds, whose house I just recently cleaned for their new nesting season  (hey refuse to return to a dirty nest), let us be about the humble tasks of maintaining our habitats. Spring housecleaning only comes once a year!

This is my annual update of this minor holiday. Enjoy!

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Winter Haiku

~ purplesage41 ~ Leave a comment

As you-all know haiku is a Japanese poetic form. They are m ore loose with the number of    lines and numbers of syllables, but we Anglos seem to have adopted  a structured form of three lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables. I like the discipline; I find it easier to be creative sometimes when the picture you are painting is bounded by a frame!

So here are three winter haiku as I reflect on my experience of my 85th winter.

Winter’s cold dark days

Turn souls inward, watching

For the groundhog’s sign.

Winter’s main task is not

To wait, but to spend this time

Being and becoming.

Under the snow lie bulbs

Spreading their deep roots below

Prepared to blossom forth.

Got a haiku you can share/ Send them to me.