Tuesday, May 1, 2007

Mother Jones

No, not the magazine. The original.

She was actually talking to Calvin Coolidge there.


I was hunting on the Web for a photo of her to post or for a copy of the semi-well-known icon by Robert Lentz (reproduced here without the Trinity store ad, haha – someone must have scanned a card of it) and found several reproductions of the icon including one on a blog I’d never visited which notes (back there two years ago – yes, the blog is still around) that MJ's birthday is May 1 ! And here I was just looking for her ‘cause it was the Day of Labor.

No time to check sources but even if it’s not really her birthday it’s a perfect day to honor her.

And the reason I am posting this is because I must wait a day or two before composing the answer to the question in the previous post. We are at the end of the semester at the institution where I teach and I am deep in reading student papers and calculating end of semester grades. Kirstin and Padre Mickey, there are answers to you in the comments section of the previous post.

So hurrah for Mother Jones, and remember what she said, as quoted on the icon: “Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living.”I’m all for praying for the living too – but not just praying for them.

Here’s Ma Jones’s Autobiography. The author of a biographical profile says Mother Jones exaggerated her age (claiming to be 100 years old the year of her death). But her union work is fact and true and she sure knew what happened at the Haymarket in Chicago back that May 1. (That’s a chapter of her autobio.) A recent bio that looks quite solid (by Elliott Gorn) says the May 1 birth date is fiction and Mother Jones came up with this fiction in honor of Haymarket May Day. (Read this review of the book, it’s very interesting.) Okay, so I checked sources after all, fast.

And either way, it's her day.

And that of countless others. Solidarity forever.

Talk amongst yourselves. I’ll be back.

1 comment:

Algernon said...

Deep bow to Mother Jones.