Leave a comment so I know you're out there. 

Some Good News!
 
For a national team that used to travel coach while the men sat in first class, the U.S. Women's Soccer Team scored a major victory. After years of litigation focused on equal pay and benefits, the women’s team received a settlement agreement for past discrimination and future equal pay and bonuses. The settlement was contingent upon achieving new collective bargaining agreements for women and men. 
 
The U. S. Soccer Federation employs both teams. President Cindy Parlow Cone, a former national team player and president since 2020, said, “There were moments when I thought it was all going to fall apart, and then it came back together, and it’s a real credit to all the different groups coming together, negotiating at one table.” According to the Boston Globe, the federation will be the first American national governing body to pay equally for its men’s and women’s teams. 
 
This becomes complicated, because there is an international and a US governing body. The US governing body will now pool the funds it receives from the international body and distribute them equally to all players. 
 
There are many facets of the agreements. Women gave up a guaranteed annual salary in order to benefit from equal wages and bonuses. The distribution of the World Cup funds will be equal for all U.S. team players. Both teams receive a share of ticket, broadcast and sponsor revenue, and the men players receive child care.
The impressive result is that the men’s and women’s teams and others worked together to achieve this victory. 
 
The women’s team endured discrimination for years. They used their fourth World Cup victory and many laws to resolve the inequities. With a functioning Equal Rights Amendment, this would have been a much quicker and less painful process.
 
The right to equality based on sex would have been self-evident. 


Thanks for reading. Leave a comment so I know you're out there, Elizabeth 

It is our time AGAIN! We are being asked to protect the next generation's reproductive rights. I’m tired of hearing people say that the Supreme Court will probably overturn or severely limit Roe v. Wade. Are we just going to sit by and let this happen? We need to follow the lead of Columbia and Argentina and Mexico. We need to fight this injustice in the streets of America!!!!!!!
 
This Saturday, April 9th at 2pm, Boston Common in the Free Speech Area across from Massachusetts State House 

​I am going. Please join me! RSVP + Share

NOW is the time to stand up, together, as if our lives depend upon it!
​

 On Friday, I learned that a colleague at work, Jackie, might get tickets to the Barbra Streisand Concert at Madison Square Garden for Monday evening! It was 1994. Bucket lists were not yet in vogue, but if they were, this concert would be at the top of mine. I became a devoted fan at 18, when Barbra starred in Funny Girl. I watched every Streisand movie, and her specials on TV. On Saturday, as I took my daughter to get a haircut, my then-husband received Jackie's call and said I was busy on Monday and could not go to a concert in New York City. You can imagine the discussion that took place when I arrived home. 
 
It was true. I was busy on Monday, but a person can do more than one thing a day. My daughter, Meg, and I planned to walk to Crane Beach on Monday. Crane is a four-mile sandy beach, with acres of hiking dunes and pine forests. She was in middle school, and we had been looking forward to this five-mile trek to the annual Crane Beach picnic for a while. I also had to be at work on Tuesday morning. 
 
I didn’t have Jackie’s phone number and started to panic. I contacted coworkers anxiously until I located it. She wasn't surprised to hear from me and was holding my ticket. Jackie was driving the concert-goers to New York on Monday, leaving work at noon. They had a reservation at a Times Square hotel. I said I'd meet them there.  
 
My heart began to pound faster when I called the Boston / NYC shuttle to secure a seat on Monday’s 4:30 p.m. flight, plenty of time for the concert. 
 
Sitting on the beach Monday morning overlooking Ipswich Bay, surrounded by children and parents, I could only think of the evening show. How would I get through the next four hours of dinner menu chatter and children screaming with glee. Meg was twelve years old and settled in with her best friend's mother while I took a school bus ride home. After checking in on my younger daughter at our family daycare, I carefully folded my black, velvet, full-length one shoulder dress in my overnight bag. It was a perfect outfit for the evening. I bought it the previous year for Bill Clinton's inaugural ball. Butterflies fluttered in my stomach as I approached the airport. To my delight, an old friend I had connected with during the inauguration was on the plane. 
 
New York City was a flurry of lights and sounds. The evening began when six women from the Massachusetts State Comptroller's Office arrived at Madison Square Garden. There was no time for a sit-down dinner; we stood at Roy Rogers across the street and ate burgers. Not your typical clientele in our gowns and bling. 
 
We had relatively good seats for the last minute purchase, but I still rented binoculars. The crowd filled the garden with a loud hum. Barbra stepped on stage in a stunning cream-colored princess gown. In her first set, she sang my favorites "Don't Rain on My Parade" and "People." During a soulful version of "He Touched Me," one of the musicians played in the wrong key. Barbra was mortified and stopped singing. She actually told us to "talk among yourselves while I'm attending to this." The audience laughed and we chatted with the people behind us from Chicago. 
 
Barbra introduced her final song of the evening with: “My idea of a perfect world is where we all appreciate each other’s differences: short/tall, Democrat/Republican, Black/White, gay/straight. A world in which we are all equal, but definitely not the same.” (It was 1994.) Then she sang “Somewhere.”  
 
After the spectacular concert, I bought an 18" x 22" photo of Barbra leaning against a post in a tailored jacket and trousers with that shy smile. Her black sandals reminded me of my grandmother. It's still hanging in my office. I told my work friends I was going to meet Barbra in her dressing room. They chuckled, "Yeah, sure," and left. As I made my way backstage, Barbra said, "You must be Polly (my stage name). Would you like something to drink?" And the evening began again. 
 
We talked about how she began to sing publicly, and about her shyness on stage. Her manager poked his head into her dressing room and said, “That last song was broadcast live on the Times Square Big Screen!” We both cheered. I told Barbra I'd been singing Karaoke and in church choirs for years. 
 
When we arrived at her suite, the party was in full gear. Barbra made her way around the room and introduced me to Celine Dion, Michael Douglas, Hillary Clinton and others. I kept pinching myself. An hour later, she pulled me outside and we went to a Karaoke club. We sang and sang. If you're Barbra Streisand, you don't have to wait until your turn. When we sang "Second Hand Rose," skating across the stage seemed natural.  Barbra's parting song was "Bye Bye Birdie," and her limo dropped me at the hotel.  
 
~
 
When the alarm went off at 5:00 a.m., I wondered if it had happened.
 


Do you have an adventure you want to share? Leave a comment so I'll know you're out there. 

Happy Thanksgiving 

     Denis returned from getting the luggage from the car, like a man who had seen a ghost. “What happened?” I asked. “Someone broke the window in the car. Glass is everywhere.” My husband Denis and I had flown to San Francisco. My brother Sean was scheduled to undergo surgery in the middle of the pandemic. I don’t remember taking a breath on the plane. 
 
     We picked Sean up in Berkeley. Friends were caring for him there. He was severely depressed and fragile. We parked the car on Pine Street in front of Sean’s apartment building on Nob Hill, and let him settle in. The apartment was disheveled after months of illness. 
 
     “Your purse is gone.” I stared at him. My purse is gone. Okay. Everything in the purse can be replaced: iPhone, pepper spray, passport. The purse itself, bought from the Marimekko store in downtown Copenhagen, not so simple. My appointment book and writing notebook, impossible. Fortunately, my wallet was in my back pocket, it’s usual place. I will have an ID to leave on the jet plane to go home. No one was hurt. 

       Denis cringed, “Your carry-on bag with the china is also gone.”

     My carry-on bag. “The family china is gone?” I doubled over and tried to scream, but nothing came out. I entered another room, trying not to upset my brother. How could this happen? We’re in a good neighborhood, people on the sidewalks, the car was locked and only for an hour. It would be parked in a commercial garage during our stay. How will I tell my daughter?

     After consulting with numerous moving companies, even at $3,000, none would guarantee the safety of the china from Massachusetts to the west coast. I was delivering the china to my daughter one small suitcase at a time. I took a long walk up and down the streets on Nob Hill, imagining how upset my daughter would be, or maybe how distressed I was. Then I began to think how surprised the thief would be when he opened the suitcase. What would a street thief do with a suitcase full of John Maddock-Royal Vitreous china from England? Serve himself afternoon tea or perhaps give his mother china for Christmas? A smile appeared, and I knew it would be okay to return to the apartment. 

     No one was hurt. 

Do you have a theft story that turned out ok? Leave me a comment so I know you're out there. Thanks, Elizabeth

Two by Two
 
The evening sun highlighted the crowd on the lawn between the Custom House Maritime Museum and the Merrimac River as she sprinted toward our standing ovation. Senator Elizabeth Warren visited Newburyport, Massachusetts in August 2021 to update constituents on legislative actions in Washington.
 
After a quick briefing on the impacts of the stimulus law and infrastructure bills, the senator moved into questions. A lottery was used to select attendees with questions. If you had an issue, you received a numbered ticket, like at a carnival. Mine was 842150.
 
Most questions for Senator Warren were on infrastructure bills, climate change, and the Senate filibuster, which required sixty votes to pass legislation. The woman before me requested hope on the voting rights issue. My question was about ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), and the voting rights discussion would be an awesome lead in. The next number pulled was 842150. Mine!
 
I said I would like to expand on the equality conversation. She nodded. I was careful to be objective, since Senator Warren had not yet sponsored Senate Joint Resolution 1, the bill to remove the deadline to ratify the ERA. We have enough states that ratified (3/4) but the deadline passed in 1982. Congress can easily rectify this delay by removing the deadline. The House voted to remove the deadline in 2020 after Virginia ratified the ERA, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blocked the Senate from voting on the bill. 
 
I continued. 
 
Five senators have sponsored the bill: two democrats, one independent, and two republicans. What strategy would you recommend for encouraging the other Democrats to sponsor the ERA? Warren responded, “You’re probably wondering why your senator hasn’t sponsored the bill.” I nodded. 
 
She continued.
 
“If a bill is controversial, there’s a practice not to load it up with democratic sponsors, because partisan news outlets will brandish it as a democratic bill.” Then a smile appeared as if she were going to share a secret. “It’s called two by two, or Noah’s Ark.” Puzzled faces were everywhere. “Each democrat works with a republican who will also sponsor the bill, and they do so together.” 
 
This explains the two democrats and two republicans who have already sponsored the bill. It also tells us when sixty votes are attained, the number necessary to prevent a filibuster! 
 
This answer was so unexpected by me and others I talked with. It’s a whole new way to approaching the ERA. My question now is, “What republican are you working with, Senator Warren?” Of course, I was seated when it came to me. I will call her office and ask. 
 
In 1972, Alice Paul, author of the Equal Rights Amendment, said, “I never doubted that equal rights was the right direction. Most reforms, most problems are complicated. But to me there is nothing complicated about ordinary equality.”  
 
I wonder what Alice, who died in 1977, would say about equality in 2021.

​*
If you have a friend or relative in a red state, please ask them to contact their senator about sponsoring the Equal Rights Amendment. 
Thanks for reading. Please share your thoughts by clicking Comments below.