Would Amelia Earhart have an abortion? Would you?

Amelia would have. I don't have an iota of doubt. Abortion is still a hot button topic, the sanctity of life and so on. Do I believe in the sanctity of life? Really, come on, is that what this is about? Or is it about yet another gray area, one of the many life is full of? I agree that when a baby is conceived there is life of a sort. There's a being growing inside the mother's body, and by being I don't mean anything more. It depends on the mother then, on how she feels and what she wants. Having an abortion isn't often an easy decision, neither is choosing to have a baby, yet both decisions are made cavalierly. That's how it is. Human beings are often thoughtless. Should we take away the chance for some of them to make a better choice? To choose not to raise a child they don't want? Who is stepping forward to raise all those children? Newt Gingrich? John Boehner? Slowly but surely the right to an abortion is being chipped away. It makes me angry. And it makes me wonder why we have to even have this discussion. Women have a right to control the course of their own lives. They have a right to choose, and as for the sanctity of life? Please, have any of these people who claim that abortion is murder spent much time looking around at how many people die of abuse and neglect each day?

I believe that someone like Amelia, an ardent feminist, a woman who wanted more than anything to pursue her passion, would have no trouble choosing. She might feel regret. But she would also know that it was a choice, one that she would be glad to be able to make. Her sister claimed that she once said she would have liked to have children but didn't have the time. If one has the intelligence to understand their limitations,then by all means let's give them the opportunity to make an intelligent choice.

And yes, by the way, it is a plot point. . .

Things Amelia Earhart knew and we are still learning: Part I

When she lived in Los Angeles Amelia Earhart attended an IWW meeting. For those who don't know or weren't born yet or didn't take 20th Century American History, the IWW or Wobblies were arguing for unions. For collective bargaining and fairness to workers. For pensions. For health care. For a living wage. It was apparently a revolutionary concept then and apparently it still is now. We have Republicans across the country deciding that small government means fucking the middle class big time. Who gains? The same people who gained back in the early twentieth century. The richest of the rich. Corporations, etc. Will we never learn?

Amelia Earhart thought that the IWW was making some excellent points. She wasn't anti-American, she was a thinking American, and she believed that this country was a place where everyone deserves a chance to get paid fairly for an honest day's work. Apparently we have learned nothing in the interim. See Wisconsin for further details. Maybe finally we have had enough? I hope so.

Time flies by so fast; or why Amelia Earhart haunts us

She is lost. Lost in time and lost forever. Humans love a mystery and this is one that endures. So little does, these days we live in a world where so much, maybe too much is revealed. Amelia remains out there in the ether, there's something wonderful about that when we live so practically and our lives unfold at such a breakneck speed.

Yes, that speed, that urgency . . .it's startling. But perhaps it's only that time compresses the older I get. Amelia returns in 1980, it was a pivotal year for me. Marriage, graduate school, a moment when I began to believe I could be an adult. But growing up and becoming an adult has taken much, much longer.

Driving down the Garden State Parkway yesterday I thought of the first time I came out with my parents to show them the house we would buy in the suburbs. My mother pointed out the deadly chemical plant on the way, (really just a pharmaceutical company). You know that spreads, she said, commenting on the smoke. I was pretty sure it spread back towards Manhattan too, only six miles away. But then my mother hated her children leaving, even if they were only moving twelve miles west. I had no sympathy for her, what was the big deal? So she wouldn't be able to get on a subway, she'd have to ride in a car. It wasn't like I was that far away.

She did ride in a car, or on a bus. She babysat my youngest when I ran off to work. But it wasn't easy for her, it was an adjustment. Parents have to adjust if they hope to have a relationship with their children. My own were so young then, five and almost three. Now they are eighteen and twenty three. One lives a continent away. The other is heading for college. My husband and I are going to be alone again as we were in 1980 when we decided it was time to marry. So much has changed, time does fly by so quickly, all the truisms are horribly true. I won't be able to look out the window and see my kids playing in the yard, I can't pick up the phone and call my parents, they're both gone, I can't even stay in this house forever, too big, too expensive, too ridiculous. Life marches on and drags us with it. Only Amelia is immune. She stares out from the pages looking eternally youthful, a little tired, a little shopworn, but smiling, always smiling for the camera.

Amelia was there; or Central Park on December 14, 1980

I went to the park to join the other two hundred thousand mourners. I'd spent the days since the murder hiding out in my apartment with my husband, David. Hearing the news was surreal, relayed via Monday Night Football. I'd grown up right near the Dakota and was going to graduate school at Columbia at the time. I still lived on the Upper West Side. Within days the ubiquitous street vendors started playing all of Lennon's songs, it was macabre and unnerving. Gloves, scarves and books were sold as he sang 'so you say it is Christmas.'

I lived through both Kennedy assassinations, through Martin Luther King, Jr's death in Memphis and the riots that followed. I remembered Malcolm X being shot at the Audubon Ballroom. All those murders effected me, but when John was murdered I was devastated. I suppose that this was what it took for me to lose my innocence.

Amelia is there too. She walks into the park with someone very dear to her, very close to her. He's stricken, while she is there to comfort him and observe, uniquely situated to understand the uncommon feelings on display. Sometimes a famous person touches you in a way that makes you think you know them, that's how it was for many of us with John. And that's how I feel about Amelia. . .

She can't take care of the house, so she can't fly the plane?

This just in from a link via the Huffington Post, a male passenger freaked out when he discovered that the pilot was a woman. Frankly, I'm pretty freaked out to discover that most of the people who run this country are old, white and male. So there. . .
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/25/indigo-airlines-female-pilot_n_828122.html

Contemplating Love and Loss: Or why Amelia Earhart . . .

The last year has been pretty darn blue. The beginning was consumed with watching my mother get thinner and thinner until she seemed to waste away. When she died it was hardly unexpected. What was shocking was how long she stayed alive, wishing for death, what was unexpected from such a practical woman was how terrified she was of dying. The same person who liked to breezily discuss the Hemlock Society and talk about cremation was hardly sanguine when it came time for it to be her turn. Not that I think I'll be any different, but then again, I don't pretend to be sanguine about dying at all. I prefer life, thank you very much. And undoubtedly will go out kicking and screaming.

Ever onwards I trudged through the mess of sibling misery and the selling of my childhood home. Let me just say that it behooves all of us to get rid of every possible thing we can before we get to a certain age. You sure don't want your children dealing with it. As for all those precious treasures, if only my mother had bought something like that Chinese vase they found in England that sold for a fortune. Instead she bought things she liked, never paying too much out of a Depression sense of frugality. Most were worth less than she paid for them. What she had an eye for was real estate. For that I am very very grateful.

Through to the Fall and into the Winter, my poor dog succumbing to old age. Not at all the same as my mom, not even close. Still I loved her and loved the memories of her playing with my kids in the backyard. She was the best outfielder ever.

I keep waiting for that so called silver lining. It must be out there somewhere, but mostly I think that being my age is kind of crappy. We seem to be stuck between watching our kids go off, (if we have them) and watching our parents grow old and lose their minds and die. It's hard not to feel a tad resentful.

I see why I was drawn to writing this seemingly endless novel. It's all in the components. I enjoy writing about the two young girls, best friends. It's fun being seventeen again. If only I could go back, or at least have that sense of freedom and possibility. I also have a lot of sympathy for every character;for Amelia Earhart who rushes impetuously into life, defying the odds, willing to try anything and everything. For her sister who, (at least in my version) can't help both defending her seemingly perfect sister and resenting her. They're all me I suppose in one way or another. And they all represent feelings I've had over the course of the last few years. With age comes wisdom. Yes, but I could do with a little less wisdom and a little less age too, thank you kindly.

Amelia Earhart is leaving on a jet plane . . .or la plus ca change

Yes a jet. The Eastern shuttle, shuttling down to New York City. The world has changed but not enough for Amelia. Apparently women are still relegated to service duties, plumping pillows, fetching drinks. Evidently I have a fond memory of what the service was like back when, when flying was glamorous. Or glamorous enough. Does it tick her off, most definitely. Will she want to do something about women still being second-class citizens? I would think yes.

I wonder how much things have changed, there are movements that give you reason to hope. Millions of Egyptians massing to topple a dictator and others in the Arab world trying to do the same, finally saying enough is enough. These an antidote to the sadly un-ironic rantings of Glenn Beck and his ilk, or the inability to enact reasonable gun control in this country, or the wider and wider divide here between rich and poor.
I think Amelia would find her new life curious. In 1980 women were liberated, but surely not the equals of their male counterparts. That still holds true, just look at income inequality. La plus ca change . . .still some things have changed and that would make her hopeful. I look forward to exploring this with her, just as I explored it once myself, growing up and knowing that rules were there to be broken and that I was someone who needed to break them.