A letter to my sister, Shirley

Dear Shirley                  January 11, 2016             Fruit Heights Utah 84037

   I think about you every day – when I’m in the kitchen, when I’m at the computer, when I go for a walk.

   Does Amy show you my blogs? I wish I knew. I don’t like to be redundant but if you’re not seeing them, it’s the way I tell my story.

   Amy Lyn’s getting to be quite an artist. She does watercolors.

DeMoin, Bryant, Lynn Charles, Calvin, Stanley, Keenan, Shirley,

Mama, Jolene, Nellie, Lucy, Jeanette,

David, Amy Jayne, Jeanne, Effie

 With Brent and DeRay minus Jeanette

   Where was Charles? At a meeting? You can tell it is a Sunday at Christmastime at your house. Was he out doing chores? At the ranch? 1970

Jolene, Effie, Nellie at the piano, Jeanne, David, Amy, Brent 1970

   And that’s your history lesson for today.  Carolyn would be between David and Amy but she was singing with them in heaven.

   It took all night for the memory flood gates to open.

   This was the second year in a row we had gone to Orderville for Christmas. We were living in the garage on the outskirts of Kaysville while building the house and we told the kids that since we had no chimney no way could Santa find us. 

   When we got back home, I had a miscarriage. We were devastated. We had been married over 14 years and had had one child and adopted one child.  I lost the baby (a little girl) at home but I went to the University of Utah hospital for the D&C and on the follow-up visit I was blubbing to the doctor. (Not the doctor who had miraculously performed the surgery. I say miraculously because it was Dr. Molktar from India or Egypt, I can’t remember which, the only one in Utah to perform that particular surgery at that time. Later it was perfected and became commonplace. The very day I had the surgery, his house burned down in India. He went home and I never saw him again. Dr. Poulson took over my pre-opt care.)  “Listen young lady,” he scolded, “you are very lucky. Many women who have that extensive of surgery never recover. They never get their health back.” It was for Endometritis and they told me they scraped and removed so many tumors. They had planned to remove my appendix while they had me cut open but they did so much other stuff that took so long that they left the appendix alone. All the rest of the time I was recovering, I had a side ache and just knew I had appendicitis until they told me to forget it.  I remember standing out in the street by Aunt El’s when I was a child listening to Mama and Pearl Bolander talk. Pearl was telling this horror tale of someone’s appendix bursting who died or who almost died or who could have died. She may have been talking about Karen who lived to rear a large family.
   In my mind, I always blamed that miscarriage on the above ground atomic bomb testing at the Nevada site during that window of time. Being home, I had foolishly eaten snow off the ground like we did in childhood.

   I didn’t know a miscarriage would be like a death. You go through all the stages of grief. I became fearful and over-protective of Brent and Jeanne. We had a stream above us and a stream below us and I would frantically run down the steam looking for them when I didn’t know where they were at the moment.

   Happily, within a few months, I was pregnant again and I was indeed one of the lucky ones. Brooke was born later than year (on December 21, 1971).

   And Eddy in March of 1973 and Amy December 1974, completing our family.

   With the normal highs and lows of mortality.

   It’s worth every tear.

   I wanted to send a picture of us in England or Washington DC but they were downstairs and I’m upstairs so that will be for another time.

   We had a lot of good times together. San Diego. Washington DC. Nauvoo. Branson. But the best was our visit with Zena in Scotland.

   DeRay sends his love. He had two cancer surgeries on his face in December which healed nicely but he’s having a hard time getting around and can’t raise his arms and things like that. We’re thinking old age isn’t what it’s cracked up to be.

   With much love and admiration,

                                 Jeanette

The Housekeeping Evolution

When we lived in Stadium Village

On the University of Utah campus

As newly weds

A 9x12 rug swathed the entire floor.

A small kitchen with bamboo covered the cupboards

A half sink, hot plate, roaster oven;

A shower, toilet, no sink for a bathroom.

Thanksgiving Dinner Stadium Village 1957

Lynn, Juanita, DeRay, Jeanette, Mama, Verla, Carol

We lived in this one-room apartment for three years.

And I had my hair cut short.

Working full time,

PHTC

I had no choice but to clean on Saturday.

It still took me several hours.

Small is harder than larger.

Where to put everything?

Our first home in Orem

After we remodeled it

Was a breeze.

1160 square feet.

Three bedrooms.

A bath and a half.

Whoever dreamed of such luxury and wealth?

Our best friends in Orem. Maynard & JoAnn Erickson. Childless too.

Eventually, they had two sons who grew up to be doctors.

Maynard died 20 years ago. We still keep in touch with JoAnn, a retired school teacher.

Mama, Carol, Verla, Jeanette, DeRay Orem 1962

I'm showing off here. When you wait 7 years to get pregnant, it's a BIG DEAL.

DeRay & Brent 1963

Still cleaning on Saturday while working

Or going to school.

After the children came along

And I was a stay-at-home mom,

I cleaned the entire house on Friday.

Layton – Farmington – West Layton – Bountiful - Kaysville.

 

 Brent with cousins Jayson, Todd & Tim Esplin 1964 Farmington

With the Swapps in Farmington

Craig, Sharon, Janet, Dick & Brent Swapp.

DeRay, Jeanette & Brent Hugh

 Jeanette & Brent Farmington 1964

Carol, Verla holding Brent with Stephen Bailey Farmington

Lucy and Mama with Effie and Brent, West Layton 1965

Brent in West Layton

Building our new home in Bountiful 1966 Brent, Jeanette, DeRay

Brent's 4th Birthday with cousin Tena Esplin, sister Jeanne and friend, Owen Reeder

DeRay and Uncle Grant putting a roof on the deck.

The home DeRay built on the outskirts of Kaysville. 1975

Jeanne, Brooke, Jeanette, Amy Lyn, Eddy, DeRay

With Grantma and Grandpa Pugh in conversation pit

Brent, Eddy, Brooke, Amy Lyn, Jeanne

Amy's birthday party showing off the Indian Room

Amy, Eddy, Brooke & friends. 1976

I learned that from my mother.

Mop, vacuum, dust, clean good once a week.

Eventually, as the children left home,

I decided every other week would do.

Then once a month.

Now instead of cleaning everything in one day

I would clean one room each day.

1)        Kitchen.

2)               Baths – four now.

3)               Living, dining, family room.

4)               Upstairs.

One day for discretionary; (before Amy moved home I cleaned the basement).

Saturdays free.

That’s a lot of pressure in one week

When you’re trying to do something with Eddy

Each morning.

Usually it’s 2 before lunch is over and cleaned up.

Then I have to start fixing dinner at 4.

What if I’m tired after working out at the gym?

Getting along in years, you know.

So now –

I clean the upstairs (my least favorite of all projects)

One week; Day 1) bedrooms, Day 2) vacuum two flights of stairs, upholstery; Day 3)computer room.

And the other cleaning projects the next week.

Then I rest.

History

Twelve Years a Slave is an adaptation of the 1853 memoir Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup, a New York State-born free African American man who was kidnapped in Washington, D.C., in 1841 and sold into slavery.  Facing cruelty at the hands of a malevolent slave owner, as well as unexpected kindnesses, Solomon struggles not only to stay alive, but to retain his dignity.

One of his owners, Epps, believes his right to abuse his slaves is biblically sanctioned. The slaves must pick at least 200 pounds of cotton every day, or be beaten.

The Bible contains several references to slavery, which was a common practice in antiquity.. The Bible stipulates the treatment of bondsmen, especially in the Old Testament. There are also references to slavery in the New Testament. Male Israelite slaves were to be offered release after seven years of service, with some conditions. Foreign slaves and their posterity became the perpetual property of the owner's family. The Bible was cited as justification for slavery by defenders.

Slavery in the New Testament:  In several Pauline epistles and the First Epistle of Peter, slaves are admonished to obey their masters, as to the Lord, and not to men.   The Epistle to Philemon has become an important text in regard to slavery; it was used by pro-slavery advocates as well as by abolitionists.  In the epistle, Paul writes that he is returning Onesimus, a fugitive slave, back to his master Philemon; however, Paul also entreats Philemon to regard Onesimus, who he says he views as a son, not as a slave but as a beloved brother in Christ. Philemon is requested to treat Onesimus as he would treat Paul.  I guess Epps forgot to read that part.

In the twelfth year of his unforgettable odyssey, Solomon's chance meeting with a Canadian abolitionist will forever alter his life.  He begins working on the construction of a gazebo with a Canadian laborer named Bass (Brad Pitt). Bass earns Epps' displeasure by expressing his opposition to slavery, by trying to explain to Epps that he could have a little compassion towards those working for him. Epps on the other hand doesn't see them as people, but as property - his property. 

You know the story of Nelson Mandela. 
Former President of South Africa
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was a South African anti-apartheid revolutionary, politician, and philanthropist who served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999.
Born: July 18, 1918, Mvezo, South Africa
Died: December 5, 2013, Houghton Estate 

     After 27 years in prison Nelson Mandela was freed in 1990 and negotiated the end of apartheid in South Africa bringing peace to a racially divided country and leading the fight for human rights around the world.
     The South African activist and former president Nelson Mandela (1918-2013) helped bring an end to apartheid and has been a global advocate for human rights. A member of the African National Congress party beginning in the 1940s, he was a leader of both peaceful protests and armed resistance against the white minority’s oppressive regime in a racially divided South Africa. His actions landed him in prison for nearly three decades and made him the face of the anti-apartheid movement both within his country and internationally. Released in 1990, he participated in the eradication of apartheid and in 1994 became the first black president of South Africa, forming a multi-ethnic government to oversee the country’s transition. after retiring from politics in 1999, he remained a devoted champion for peace and social justice in his own nation and around the world until his death in 2013 at the age of 95. 
1.            Invictus (2009) 
Synopsis.  The film tells the inspiring true story of how Nelson Mandela joined forces with the captain of South Africa's rugby team to help unite their country. Newly elected President Mandela knows his nation remains racially and economically divided in the wake of apartheid. Believing he can bring his people together through the universal language of sport, Mandela rallies South Africa's rugby team as they make their historic run to the 1995 Rugby World Cup Championship match. 
2.           Mandela & De Klerk (1997 Full TV Movie) with Sidney Poitier & Michael Cane.

Synopsis:  On June 12, 1964, Nelson Mandela, along with a number of political detainees, was sentenced to life imprisonment in what remains the most sensational treason trial in the history of South Africa. The incarceration of Mandela and other political prisoners on Robben Island would become a symbol of the struggle to end apartheid and win freedom for the black majority in South Africa. On February 2, 1990, President F.W. De Klerk stood before Parliament and announced the legalization of the African National Congress and a host of other banned political organizations. At the same time, he announced that Nelson Mandela, having served 27 years in prison, would be released within 7 days. Yet the world, and indeed most South Africans, knew little about how this momentous occasion came to pass. Until now. Mandela & De Klerk was filmed in South Africa. Most of the locations are those where the actual events took place, and the dramatized sequences are augmented with newsreel footage to ensure the most accurate portrayal possible of recent historical events. 
3.            Nelson Mandela’s life story documentary.  You can watch it on the internet.  It is so good because he is filmed telling different part of his life, including his childhood.  There is also a narrator but I like it best when he tells the story himself. 
4.            Mandela.  The movie released right after his death.  We liked it the least of the three we have seen recently

Synopsis:  Nelson Mandela is a South African lawyer who joins the African National Congress in the 1940s when the law under the Apartheid system's brutal tyranny proves useless for his people. Forced to abandon peaceful protest for armed resistance after the Sharpeville Massacre, Mandela pays the price when he and his comrades are sentenced to life imprisonment for treason while his wife, Winnie, is abused by the authorities herself. Over the decades in chains, Mandela's spirit is unbowed as his struggle goes on in and beyond his captivity to become an international cause. However, as Winnie's determination hardens over the years into a violent ruthlessness, Nelson's own stature rises until he becomes the renowned leader of his movement. That status would be put to the test as his release nears and a way must be found to win a peaceful victory that will leave his country, and all its peoples, unstained.

We watched the new Mandela movie on Friday night; Saturday night we watched “Twelve Years a Slave,”--Academy Award Best Movie for 2013.  Both movies in one weekend were about more than I could bear: the whippings, the cruelty, the raw brutality; the demeaning, depreciating, dehumanizing.  “I’m glad I didn’t live when slavery was practiced,” my sister-in-law said, as we talked about it on Monday night.

I thought of the church services in Twelve Years a Slave, where they preached directly from the Bible.  “We are the Masters and you are to be obedient to us.”
     Today, we abhor them being robbed of their fundamental human and equal rights.
     The similarity suddenly struck me.  We use scripture to stress that homosexuality is evil, making it our sacred duty to marginalize, ostracize, and judge.  Will future generations look back on our history and say, “How could they be so cruel?  I’m glad I didn’t live then.”

****

Appendage

Gay marriage fight recalls ‘60s mixed-race debate

10th Circuit Court heard Utah’s same-sex marriage case on the anniversary of landmark 1967 hearing on mixed-race marriages.

By Brooke Adams

| The Salt Lake Tribune

First Published Apr 13 2014 06:20 pm

As the judge listened to the attorney explain the state’s interest in barring the couple from marrying, he had a question: Are you saying there is scientific evidence that shows some children will be harmed by such marriages?

The question posed to R.D. McIlwaine III, assistant attorney general of Virginia, came from Chief Justice of the United States Earl Warren on April 10, 1967.An amicus brief submitted by religious groups, including The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, that support Utah’s ban on same-sex marriage, echoes comments made in the past about anti-miscegenation laws: “Marriage between a man and a woman is sanctioned by God as the right and best setting for bearing and raising children” and “traditional marriage is indispensable to social welfare and our republican form of government.”

The LDS Church reaffirmed its opposition to gay marriage at its General Conference about a week ago. Apostle Neil L. Andersen said changes in civil law cannot change the “moral law” of God.  “While many governments and well-meaning individuals have redefined marriage,” he said, “the Lord has not.”

The case, of course, was Loving v. Virginia, which ended bans on interracial marriage.

On Thursday, 47 years to the day after Warren posed his question, 10th Circuit Judge Jerome A. Holmes, who is black, brought the Loving case squarely into the same-sex marriage debate as he asked the attorney representing Utah, how is a line drawn on gender any different from one that divided races when it comes to the right to marry?

"You have a man who wants to marry another man, the only thing that bars him from getting married is sex, gender," Holmes said. "So why is that any different than Loving when you are drawing a line that is based on a protected classification?"

Attorney Gene C. Schaerr has argued in court filings that a decision affirming U.S. District Court Judge Robert J. Shelby’s Dec. 20 ruling that the state’s ban is unconstitutional would be a "judicial wrecking ball" rather than "the Loving of our age."

Schaerr told Holmes last week in Denver, that the difference was that the Loving decision didn’t "intrude into the state of Virginia’s definitional authority over marriage. The exclusion of mixed-race couples was a regulatory exclusion." And it left intact man-woman marriage, he said.

"The whole presumption in Loving was talking about man-woman marriage," he said, which is "fundamental to procreating and maintaining the human race."

But from its inception, the Loving case was framed not around gender but race, and in language and principles that parallel those used today in the same-sex marriage debate: procreation, what’s best for children, what’s natural and traditional and what’s in keeping with God’s will.

Richard Perry Loving, who was white, and Mildred Jeter, who was black, traveled to Washington, D.C. , in 1958 to marry because doing so was illegal in their home state of Virginia. They were later arrested at their home, jailed and subsequently pleaded guilty to violating the state’s "Racial Integrity Act of 1924."

An excerpt from the trial judge’s ruling is infamous for its plain expression of the public and state interest behind the act: "Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And, but for the interference with his arrangement, there would be no cause for such marriage. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix."

The judge sentenced the Lovings, parents to three children, to a year in jail but suspended the sentence provided they moved out of state. The couple relocated to Washington, D.C., but returned to Virginia occasionally under cover as the nine-year legal battle to have their marriage recognized played out.
"If we do win, we’ll be helping a lot of people," the soft-spoken Mildred Loving says in “The Loving Story,” a documentary about the case.

Virginia argued that its law was valid because it treated both whites and blacks equally under the law — much as Utah argues that its marriage prohibition applies equally to gays and lesbians.

Another key claim in the case revolved around the "scientific evidence" that then purported to show interracial marriage would lead to a "mongrel race" and harm offspring of both white and of mixed-race parents.

"The state has a natural and vital interest in maximizing the number of successful marriages that lead to stable homes and families and in minimizing those which do not," McIlwaine told the Supreme Court, according to an audio excerpt of the hearing included in the documentary. "It is clear from the most recent available evidence on the psycho/sociological aspect of this question that intermarried families are subjected to much greater pressures and problems."

Their children, he added, were frequently described as "victims" and "martyrs" of their parents’ marriages.

Bernard S. Cohen and Philip J. Hirschkop, the American Civil Liberties Union attorneys who represented the Lovings, emphasized how the laws deprived couples like the Lovings of dignity and affected the legitimacy of their children, property inheritance, survivorship rights, and other aspects of their lives.

Cohen told the court the state had failed to show how it or its people were harmed by the Lovings’ marriage, to which, he said, they had a fundamental right under the Fourteenth Amendment.
Two months later, when the court issued a unanimous decision in favor of the Lovings, there were 16 states that still barred interracial marriage. 
Fast-forward 41 years to 2004, when the Utah Legislature voted to place Amendment 3, the constitutional amendment barring same-sex marriage, on that fall’s general election ballot. 
Rep. LaVar Christensen, R-Draper, who sponsored the bill, said during floor debate that what was at stake was an "internal struggle between right and wrong" and urged his colleagues to not lower "standards or transforming fundamental principles upon which our society is based."

He said those principles stemmed from "self-evident truths" based on the "God of nature, nature’s laws," the Bible and "the morality of a people as reflected in its laws."

In Mason’s view, the conversation surrounding today’s same-sex marriage debate makes many assumptions raised in the past about interracial marriage, but he argues you can’t "just lift race discourse and scratch out ‘black’ and put in ‘gay’ " given the difference in discrimination and sanctions applied to the two groups.

Disagreement over how and whether Loving works as a framework for same-sex marriage plays out in dueling friend-of-the-court briefs filed in the Utah case at the 10th Circuit Court.

The Howard University School of Law Civil Rights Clinic, which filed an amicus brief backing the three same-sex couples challenging Utah’s ban. The clinic said gay marriage opponents have "carbon copied" the same "flawed arguments that once were used to justify racial slavery and apartheid."

Then, as now, claims were made that expanding marital rights would upset the social order and lead to social chaos, the clinic said. Interracial relationships were described as unnatural and "contrary to God’s will." Such relationships were bluntly sexualized through use of coded language about sexual taboos — which the clinic said is repeated today in references to "adult-centric" lifestyles.

"Without acknowledging the racial provenance of these discredited arguments, opponents of marriage equality have attacked same-sex couples as a threat to American society, American families, heterosexual marriage, and children," it said. "None of these statements is remotely true."

Appendage II

LBJ’s legacy for gay rights

By Jonathan Capehart

The Washington Post

First Published Apr 13 2014 01:01 am •

In his speech Thursday commemorating the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, President Barack Obama talked about the enduring power of one of President Lyndon Johnson’s signature accomplishments.

"Because of the civil rights movement, because of the laws President Johnson signed, new doors of opportunity and education swung open for everybody, not all at once, but they swung open. Not just blacks and whites, but also women and Latinos and Asians and Native Americans and gay Americans and Americans with a disability."

 This isn’t the first time Obama has linked the push for civil rights by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) Americans to the movement that made the 1964 law a reality. At his second inaugural, the president put under the same historic umbrella the Selma marches for African American equality and the Stonewall riots that ushered in the modern LGBT rights movement.

And in a February speech, Attorney General Eric Holder noted: "Just as our forebears came together to overcome tremendous adversity - and to forge the more just and more equal societies in which we now live - so, too, must the current generation rise to the causes that have become the struggles of our day; the defining civil rights challenges of our time. I believe one of these struggles is the fight for equality for our lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender - or LGBT - citizens."

Meanwhile, federal judges across the country have ruled that state bans on marriage equality violate the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection under the law. On Thursday, a federal judge in Indiana ruled that the marriage of a lesbian couple wed in Massachusetts last year must be recognized by the Hoosier State immediately.

Knowing all this, it is easy to forget that not so long ago our federal government casually dismissed the concerns of LGBT Americans, if it acknowledged them at all. Consider this passage from a June 9, 1965, letter to Frank Kameny, a founding father of the LGBT civil rights movement, from Vice President Hubert Humphrey: "Neither the Federal Executive Orders on fair employment nor the Civil Rights Act which constitute the authority for this program of non-discrimination are relevant to the problems of homosexuals."

Time would change views on gay rights. Slowly, at first, and then with a speed in recent years that has amazed proponents and opponents of LGBT equality alike.

As Obama said Thursday, "The laws LBJ passed are now as fundamental to our conception of ourselves and our democracy as the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. They are foundational, an essential piece of the American character. . . . Our rights, our freedoms - they are not given. They must be won. They must be nurtured through struggle and discipline and persistence and faith."

From Kameny’s persistence in the face of official rejection in 1965 to those same-sex couples pushing for marriage equality today, LGBT Americans are fighting to win. Marriage equality and the fairness that would flow from it nationwide are coming. It’s just a matter of when.