Margaret Chase Smith might right a bell if Margaret Smith does not? Anyone? Hello? She is a member of that entirely extinct sub-species once known as ‘moderate Republicans’, a Congressperson from Maine, and one of the first women to run for President of the U.S., which she did in1964. She is also worth remembering – and honoring – because she was a strong, determined, public voice against the evils of Senator Joe McCarthy, a voice we need in the GOP of today re: our own current fascist, authoritarian wanna-be, Donnie Dump, whose cult of personality is running the GQP, leading a death cult not entirely unlike that of Jim Jones (and if you’re wondering who the heck Jim Jones was, please watch this space).
Margaret Chase was a Maine born daughter of English and French Canadian stock, the oldest of six children who, after high school, worked in a local paper among many other jobs before marrying, at thirty-three, a man twenty-one years her senior. He was her boss at the paper, Clyde Smith; eventually she would go on to win his congressional seat after Mr. Smith had served in D.C. for four years, and upon his unexpected death as the result of a heart attack. By that point, the Smiths had been married for a decade; Margaret had accompanied her husband to Washington, where she acted as his secretary, scheduler, and general assistant in all things legislative and otherwise. He endorsed her as the best alternative to himself from his sickbed, and, once in office, she never received less than sixty-percent of the vote.
A supporters of the majority of FDR’s New Deal policies, Smith often broke with her party to vote with Democrats, and, along with Eleanor Roosevelt, she was the first woman to appear on Face the Nation, which they jointly did in 1956. Among many other firsts, Margaret Chase Smith was the first member of the Senate to condemn McCarthy and his Communist witch-hunt, which she did after her inaugural year in the Senate, in 1950.
She is best known, deservedly so, for her Declaration of Conscience, the entire text of which is linked below. Although in it she does not name Joe McCarthy outright, there is no question he – and others who cowered in the face of his outrages – knew of whom she was speaking. Imagine if the GOP had one woman of conscience now? Of course, why does it have to be a woman! Imagine the GOP Senate had ONE MAN of conscience who would hit the Senate floor and Dump hard and then harder, and yeah, sure Mitt Romney has at least half a conscience but – c’mon. Slamming Dump in a tell-all book and interviews after you’ve announced you’re not running for office again – especially as a multi-millionaire who can afford private security – isn’t quite the same thing. No, no it’s not.
When I was a girl, I twice spent a week and then two weeks away each summer for a total of five years running at Girl Scout camp. It was called Camp Skanatati, located outside Sherburne, New York, and, finally, I aged out of eligibility. It felt and was many miles away from home, and while I enjoyed Girl Scouts, hanging out with my friends for an hour or so after school working to earn badges in various skills, I didn’t much care for camp, but – I had no choice, my mother was insistent.
One of those five years I went on a backpacking and canoeing trip in the Adirondacks for seven of my fourteen day stay at the camp. It was grueling but gorgeous, and I loved canoeing, still do. Being on or in the water is a happy place for me. I had no friends with me, I didn’t quite have the right equipment or shoes, but there I was on and around Raquette, Forked, and Long Lakes with a bunch of girls I would never see again after that summer. Good times.
Actually, it was. Building inner resources surrounded by strangers wasn’t all that different from life for me in my childhood home, or from my adult life. Having inner resources is a super power most people skip developing, the chumps, until death, divorce, or disaster (or all three) force it upon them.
That entire two-week stay was notable for another reason, which was that from day one until I went into the communal showers near the main lodge upon my return from the Adirondacks, I didn’t look in a mirror the entire time. There weren’t mirrors anywhere else, yet this wasn’t notable until, that last day – twenty-four hours before my mother would pick me up – I saw myself after the unforced break and thought, oh, that’s me. Me. That’s what I look like, and I was surprised. Oh. Me. Me? Yes, me. Huh.
It wasn’t that I’d forgotten what I looked like, it was that I had been free of considering my looks, and hadn’t felt scrutinized for them, either. A group that was all women and girls, no mirrors, campfires and early to bed, watching every step you took or where you placed your oar was a break from the male or any other gaze (the female gaze has been taught to be as harsh, if not more so) made for a happy confluence of circumstance that led to a discovery of sorts, that I was okay, that I liked the person I saw in the mirror. The surprise I felt was largely because that person – that pale brown, freckled twelve year old in the mirror – was quite different from what I had, to that point, learned and thought about me, myself, and I.
I also learned, that day and hour, to deliberately avoid mirrors if I could, to give myself a break from my own scrutiny, from the shallow water of what a mirror reveals, which is – after all – rather superficial, ain’t it? Yes, yes, it is. And when, ten or so years later, I would read and learn about the male gaze, especially that of film and television, I remembered that day, alone in the foggy antiseptic space I’d never used before, finding myself again, or, finding myself anew, in the wake of my trek through the big woods and lakes of the mountains.
*I wrote this ages ago, and the circumstances have utterly and completely changed, but my feelings haven’t. So it goes. Gosh we had fun, though. Totally worth it, and yes, he did transform and, in a way, save my life. That’s an awful lot, isn’t it? #Grateful #Acceptance
I am 56 and this summer I will be 57. I am once again in a relationship (2 years so far) that compromises my integrity and my sense of self, except when I concentrate on gratitude and acceptance, and letting go of expectations. This I must do minute by minute it is such a struggle, many days; he is not like other men, I tell myself, and this is true for he is kind and compassionate and thoughtful. I am not being used, I tell myself; he loves me, and tells me so, yet we have spoken of how we are using one another, in a sense, but that we love one another and will see where this goes, keep our minds open. He has a girlfriend, and while at least she’s not a wife, still, I feel like I’m stuck in the land of nevers, again, doomed to repeat the same old song over and over again until finally I decide not to sing along anymore, not to play.
If things don’t change, if we continue as we are, I am once again never gonna go out on Friday night with the man I love, never gonna spend the night with him, never gonna have a relationship with his kids, never gonna hold his granddaughter close, never gonna be able to introduce him to my brother, or my friends, and never gonna know what it’s like, not having to hide out, to be proudly, openly in love. Does this matter? Does it matter that the last time I had a boyfriend (who was cheating on me as there is always, always another woman, no matter what the details look like from the outside) publicly was in 19–? Oh okay there was that one other guy almost decade ago, but he was cheating on me with the entire phone book, and I was okay/not okay with it – by then committed to accepting compromise, living back in the rural town I’d grown up in and escaped, trying to survive the painful last decade of my parents’ lives. God if you are out there, please let me escape again. Or better yet, perhaps you can help me simply not care anymore. I know that is not an option, and so I struggle, struggle on.
I love this man. His compassion freed me to have compassion for myself for the first time in my life and it transformed me and my life, even, perhaps, saved it; should I now move on, having received that gift? Hey, thanks for saving me, love you, moving on, dude! Struggling today. It’s a choice, right? So hard to love and let go and trust the universe. I know it’s all about the way I think and see it. Our minds making heaven or hell of whatever we are given. I love him and so I chose to see heaven in what we have. God help me, I chose to see heaven.
*I’m posting this because yet again I see stupid all over the internet regarding the supposed binary commonly known as ‘male or female’, which isn’t actually as simple as ‘binary’ at all. Transphobia like homophobia or misogyny or misogynoir is uncool, not groovy, not nice, is shitty and unkind. Trans people make up about 1.07% of the entire adult population in the U.S. which makes them the tiniest of minorities, and a very, very vulnerable one at that, so please, please, please just fucking stop already. JHFC. Do better. People who are what some Native cultures call ‘two-spirits’ have been around as long as human beans have been around, so STFU and be nice, okay?! Okay.
*It fascinates me that translators find similar but significantly different interpretations of these lines; the version above is my favorite but here is another, translated by Yang Xiaolin from 1995:
To be overflowing is not as good as having just enough. If a point is made too sharp, the sharpness will not last long. A houseful of treasure is impossible to keep. The rich and arrogant are destined for disaster. When you are successful and famous, quickly back out, which is the heavens’ way.
