Welcome
to a Secret Subject Swap. This month 4 brave bloggers picked a secret
subject for someone else and were assigned a secret subject to interpret
in their own style. Today we are all simultaneously divulging
our topics and submitting our posts. Read through mine and at the bottom
you’ll find links to all of today’s other Secret Subject participants.
My subject is: Do you have a historical subculture (or few) that you feel a lot of affinity to? Perhaps the Edelweiss pirates who fought Nazis in Germany? Or hippies in the United States who protected Vietnam? Any subculture from any time that you feel a connection to?
It was submitted by: Jenniy of Climaxed.
These days, in this country anyway, we're so divided, I actually feel like we're barely treading water in a culture of subcultures.
But when it comes to historical subcultures, there are 2 groups that come immediately to mind. The first one, mentioned in the prompt, is the hippie movement. I think I came to this affiliation organically, being someone whose college end of year outdoor concert featured the Grateful Dead, who danced to Casey Jones in Taiwan, and whose relative created the iconic poster "War is not healthy for children and other living things."
Listen, Hippies did not just stand for sex and drugs and rock and roll, there was a lot of substance there too. I find it hard not to affiliate myself with the concepts of openness, nonviolence, tolerance, and living and thriving in communal harmony. Hippies believed in nonviolent protest, and understood that a symbiotic existence would is mutually beneficial (a nod to the unadulterated theory of socialism). They were way ahead of their time in terms of valuing self-care and acknowledging the connective tissue between loving ourselves and loving others, as well as in terms of shedding the handcuffs of repressive societal inhibitions.
And, unlike many today (I'm looking at you, politicians) they lived what they preached.
In this culture, in our current political climate though, their main premise, the expectation that the majority of us care about each other, our planet, freedom, the right to express sexuality, the ability to object nonviolently, and the desire to protect future generations, is lost. Naive.
But hold on, there are blueberries in those lemon bars (so to speak).
Lemon Blueberry Bars
The second subculture, and the one I most relate to, is the Women's Suffrage Movement.
There are threads that tie the core beliefs of the Suffragists to the Hippies. Whether on a macro or a micro level, both were committed to a goal of bettering the human condition, and achieving their goal nonviolently, primarily through peaceful protest and civil disobedience.
Despite
how the Suffragettes were portrayed in Mary Poppins, the original
members of the Women's Suffrage Movement in the United States were serious advocates of equal
rights. They were not just fighting for the right to vote, but for full
social equality for all. They campaigned for equal access to education, for
the ability to achieve financial independence, and they were active
anti-slavery proponents.
I have nothing negative to say about the more contemporary faces of feminism, Gloria Steinem, Tarana Burke (#metoo), and all the others who kept the movement in the limelight and worked to move it forward, but my primary admiration is for those at the roots of women's rights.
The first Women's Rights convention was held in 1848. It was organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. Although the woman who was to become the most well-known advocate of women's rights (especially the right to vote), Susan B. Anthony, was not there, her mother and sister were.
Susan B. Anthony did later become the president of the National Women's Suffrage Association, and her tireless work there is why she's now become the most recognizable figure in the fight for women's voting rights.
She did not believe equal rights should be awarded, she believed they were already guaranteed under the constitution, publicly stating that the constitution says "we, the people," not "we, the male citizens." So, in the 1872 presidential election, Susan did cast a ballot. She was promptly arrested and convicted of voting illegally. She was fined $100, about which she said to the judge "I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty." And she did not.
In 2021, trump pardoned Susan B. Anthony.
That pardon was rejected by the official Susan B. Anthony Museum, explaining, in part, that a pardon is predicated on an acknowledgment of wrongdoing, a premise Susan was known to reject. If you want to honor her, they went on to state, work against voter suppression.
Yes, Susan B. Anthony is still a kick ass. Even 150 years after her death.
Here are links to all the sites now featuring Secret Subject Swap posts. Sit back, grab a cup, and check them all out. See you there:
The Diary of an Alzheimer’s Caregiver
Lemon Blueberry Bars
©www.BakingInATornado.com
10 oz lemon sandwich cookies (1/2 of a 20 oz package)
1/3 cup blueberry jam
1 cup blueberries
4 eggs
1 3/4 cups sugar
1/4 cup powdered sugar
1/3 cup lemon juice
1/2 cup flour
3/4 tsp baking power
1 TBSP powdered sugar
Directions:
*Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9 X 13 baking pan.
*Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9 X 13 baking pan.
*Process the cookies in a food processor until they are fine crumbs. Add the butter and continue to process to incorporate the butter. Press into the bottom of the prepared pan.
*Whisk the jam to loosen it, spread onto the crust, then sprinkle with the blueberries.
*Whisk together the eggs, sugar, 2 TBSP powdered sugar, and lemon juice. Whisk in the flour and baking powder, then pour into the crust.
*Bake for 35 - 40 minutes, until browned and completely set. Cool completely before sprinkling with powdered sugar and slicing. Store, covered, in the refrigerator.
