Free Republic

Norma Shearer (121st birthday today on august 11, tomorrow, American time) said "A woman today is good, or she is bad, according to the way she does a thing - and not because of the thing itself." And “The morals of yesterday are no more. They are as dead as the day they were lived. Economic independence has put woman on exactly the same footing as man.” This is easy to disapprove of. And to be drawn to. Freedom works. Morality? Whose?

George Gershwin was a wonderful free and disciplined incarnation of the American spirit. "Why should I limit myself" he said, "to only one woman when I can have as many women as I want?" He understood that he represented his era: “True music must repeat the thought and inspirations of the people and the time.” With Irving Berlin and Paul McCartney, he dominated the crafting of great popular melody in his century, saying: “I frequently hear music in the very heart of noise.” The capacity for Great Music is a gift to us from God.

Peter Paul Rubens was born on the 28th June, 1577. “My passion comes from the heavens,” said Rubens, “not from earthly musings.” In Rubens world men could be men and women could be women. There’s desire. There’s the chase. There is fun. Now, in 2023, that human reality gets confused with crime. Our deep connection, in what we traditional adults are and can be, is too often lost. But life is beautiful. God made us to couple and to love.

Virgina Satir was born 97 years ago on the 26th of June, 1916. She was a brilliant psychotherapist, whose pioneering work in helping families heal, earned her the title "Mother of Family Therapy". She wasn't a great poet, but her poem "I am me" is at least a little bit Whitmanesque to me. The first lines are: "My declaration of self-esteem I am me In all the world, there is no one else exactly like me Everything that comes out of me is authentically mine because I alone chose it ......." How like Whitman is her capacity for vision that...