Tag: justice

The Mennonite Women of Manitoba County

The horrible truth behind the amazing Movie, Women Talking.

Warning: this post deals with rape, and may be triggering for some and inappropriate for others. Proceed at your own risk.

In my last post, I discussed the not-to-be-missed movie, Women Talking. Today, I’ll discuss the real life scenario which inspired this film. I wish I could tell you that the truth was as heartening as the fiction was.

The pivotal point between the fact and the fiction is that there is a Mennonite colony in Manitoba County in Bolivia in which many of the woman have been systematically drugged and then raped by their men and boys for years. The women kept waking up with crashing headaches (the drug was originally intended for livestock), and their bodies would be bruised and bloodied, often articles of clothing would be missing, and there would be dirt in their sheets. Some women were impregnated. Some children as young as 3 years old were similarly abused. Fortunately, one perpetrator was finally caught and gave up 8 other individuals, and now 8 of them are in prison while the 9th absconded to another country.

Wouldn’t it be lovely if we could tie this horrific story up in a neat little bow as the movie does? Justice is served and life goes on. Sadly, we live in the real world. This is the point at which reality and the movie part company.

To explain the reality, I need to back up a bit. Mennonites have been around in one form or another since the 1520’s. You will find them in at least 83 countries throughout the world. Some communities have a much closer relationship to the modern world than others. It runs the gamut from those that reject all things modern to those who blend in with the larger community and are all but indistinguishable from their non-Mennonite neighbors.

I take no issue with Mennonites in general. Every adult should have a right to create their own society and come up with the rules under which that society will function, provided it does no harm to the wider community. But the operative phrase here, is “every adult”.

When communities are created that deprive a subset of their people from having any sort of agency at all, those people, whether they realize it or not, become slaves. They have no control or power over their own lives, and when they suffer abuses, they are given no voice to address them. This is unconscionable, but it happens more often than we care to acknowledge.

Such is the fate of the Mennonite women of Manitoba County, who find themselves on the very extreme edge of the Mennonite philosophical spectrum. Girls in this community are even less educated than their brothers, who are “at least” allowed to go to school until they turn 13. Their language is Low German. The girls and women are never taught to speak Spanish as the boys are, so they are incapable of speaking to the wider Bolivian world.

All the rules that govern their society are determined by 9 ministers, and those ministers are elected by men only. The community is devoid of law enforcement, because when they decided to relocate to Bolivia, they got the Bolivian government to agree to only step in in cases of murder. The ministers feel they should be able to handle any other problems that arise.

So, when some of these women finally realized that they were not the only ones who were being raped, and that this wasn’t some supernatural punishment from God or some sinister visitation from a demon, they tried to speak up. They were promptly told that this was women’s hysteria, and that they were imagining all of it. They were reminded that a woman’s role is to obey and submit.

And so the violence carried on for four more years. That’s when the one rapist was caught and everything seemed to fall apart like a house of cards. Finally, the ministers realized that this was not something that they could sweep under the rug or handle on their own.

They had contemplated building jail cells and imprisoning these men for life. It sounded like a more viable option than lynching them, which had happened to a rapist in a nearby Mennonite community. But the jail cell solution sounded grueling and unsustainable, so instead they took these criminals to the nearest city to allow Bolivian justice to be served.

The end? If only.

The main tenet of this community is that if you repent your sins, you will be forgiven. Since these men confessed (at first, anyway) the rest of the men in the community would have been quite happy to allow these sick men back into their midst. And the women were instructed to forgive these men. If the women were incapable of the forgiveness that their religious philosophy dictates, then they themselves would not be forgiven by God, so in essence the victims would be re-victimized for all eternity.

The unforgiving women would also be banished from the only community they had ever known, and what would they do then? They don’t even know where they are on the planet, having never seen a map. They don’t speak Spanish. They are taught that everything in the outside world was evil. And they are deprived of the education that would allow them to thrive in the wider world. So where were they supposed to go?

In the movie, they meet in a hayloft to have an almost scholarly debate about how they wish to move forward in light of these crimes. They make a plan for their future and execute it. I am woman, hear me roar!

In reality, to this very day, most of the victims in Manitoba County are still there and never talk about what happened. They weren’t even allowed to testify or even attend the trials. The plaintiffs were 5 men who where either husbands or fathers of some of the victims.

Oh, but it gets worse. When the wide world heard about these heinous acts, the broader Mennonite community offered to send counselors who spoke low German to help these women heal. But the ministers, and their men (their men!) did not see the point of it. What did these women need to heal from? After all, it all happened when they were unconscious.

Some reporters believe, based on interviews, that the women were never even told about the offer of counseling. So they are caught in a cycle of victim shaming and forced forgiveness and silence. That must be hell on earth.

But it gets worse still. Many in the community have told the reporters that all the rapists were not caught, and that these drugged rapes continue to this day. Less frequently, perhaps, but they still occur. And they suspect that the rapists are often their own brothers and fathers. Many people in the community now live with bars on their windows and doors, but that doesn’t keep the men who reside under their own roofs away.

There are rumors that incest ran rampant through this community even before livestock tranquilizers were brought into the mix. And when incest accusations were lodged before the ministers, they would banish those men, who would then take their families, including the victims, with them. That kind of justice doesn’t exactly encourage one to step forward.

So I suppose the women can’t be blamed for thinking that they have no recourse but to put up with this nightmare and try to make the best of it. Only a small percentage of them left. The rest are still there to this very day.

Persecution is practically in this sect’s DNA. As I said, the Mennonite doctrine came about in the 1520’s, during the Protestant Reformation in Europe. Pacifists by nature, many of them fled to Russia. By the 1870’s, Russia was no longer a welcoming place for them either, so they relocated to Canada. There, rather than living a simple life, they began to modernize. The more conservative factions of this group did not like the influence Canada was having on their people.

In the 1920’s, the most conservative among them finally had enough when Canada suggested that they should teach their children in English and adopt their standard curriculum rather than only teaching them from the bible. This faction relocated once again, this time to Mexico and Paraguay. Those governments promised to leave them alone and let them live the way they wanted to.

But in the 1960’s, even Mexico was becoming less tolerant, so they fled to more remote parts of Latin America, particularly Belize and Bolivia. These Old Colonists, as they’re called, are running out of places to go. They are left behind by the modern world, just as they wish to be, but that modern world is becoming less patient with them and their draconian lawlessness with each passing year.

I think of these victimized women, isolated deep within a country that doesn’t speak their language. We will never know for sure what is happening to them in real time. There’s no way to contact them. Outsiders are unwelcome. They don’t read. There’s no internet. There are no phones. And even if the Mennonite women of Manitoba County did find a way to speak to us, the horrible words they’d need to speak have, for the most part, been left out of their vocabulary. On purpose.

To learn more about the plight of these women, check out the following:

When Women Talk

There’s a reason we’re so often interrupted.

I just saw the most profoundly simple and yet the most intensely complex movie I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s a movie that could change us all if we let it.

It is based on the true story of a group of Mennonite women and children as young as 3 in Bolivia who have been tranquilized and brutally raped by their men and boys for years. I’ll have much more to say about this in my next blog post. First, though, let’s concentrate on this incredible movie, entitled Women Talking.

I know that discussions of this type of brutality can be triggering for some, and might make them want to avoid this movie. Let me reassure you that the abuses themselves are not shown. Just as the women in Bolivia did, the characters in this film wake up, confused, bruised, and bloody, knowing something horrible had happened, but not knowing exactly what.

For a long time, they are not believed. (The hysterical woman trope will plague us for centuries.) Then one night one of the rapists is caught, and he gives up the name of 8 others. Never having had to deal with such horrific crimes before, the colony leaders decide to give these criminals to the government for prosecution.

It appears that justice will be served. But based on their religious beliefs, the women in this colony know they will be expected to forgive these heinous acts if the men confess and repent. They are expected to look the other way and not speak of the violence that has washed over them in bloody waves. And they have a 2 day window in which they are expected to make this adjustment.

So, while the rest of the colony men are dragging the criminals into the city, many of the women and girls gather together in a hayloft to decide how to move forward. They are faced with three choices. Do nothing. Stay and Fight. Leave.

Soon, it becomes quite clear that they cannot do nothing. One woman points out that her 4-year-old daughter was one of the victims. What woman could stand by and do nothing under those circumstances? And the fact that domestic violence and incest run rampant in the community as well can no longer be ignored.

Do they want to stay and fight and build a colony that’s more equitable, that allows women to have a voice, that provides them with literacy and an education and gives them the opportunity to say no, or do they want leave everything they’ve ever known and go into a strange world plotted out only on maps that they have never even seen?

The debate becomes more complicated as the movie progresses. Do they raise their small boys in the shadows of their violent fathers, or do they teach them a new way? At what age do boys become potentially dangerous? 10? 13? 15? Is their freedom and the ability to keep their children safe more important to them than tradition and family and the comfort of the things that they’ve always known? How will they support themselves when they can’t even read?

In addition, until now they have never had the words to speak about their bodies and how they should be treated. Can they ever be silenced again? Many of these women have fallen pregnant due to these rapes. Will they be able to love these children?

I won’t further spoil the movie for you, but I urge you to see it. Even though these women live vastly different lives than most of us do, the movie’s themes will still resonate with most women. Especially the central theme, which is that women are discouraged from talking in general.

There’s a reason why we are so often interrupted, ignored, discounted, dismissed, overruled, and left out of the discussion entirely. Women talking, especially to one another, gives us strength, determination, knowledge, insight and courage. Women talking allows us to see possibilities that we’re often too busy or too undermined to contemplate on our own. Women talking equates to power, and many elements of society are very threatened when we access this power in any way.

Do you ever wonder why women make up approximately half the population of the world, and yet we are the oppressed minorities, to one degree or another, in every single country? In my opinion, it all boils down to two things: childbearing and communication. The powers that be actively work to take control of our reproductive rights, and more subtly, keep us separated as much as they can.

Some countries and religions would prefer that we have as many children as possible whether we like it or not. From their emotionless standpoint, children are valuable commodities, as they become our future workers, soldiers, and consumers. Our wombs are the factories in which these commodities are produced.

There’s also the societal “side benefit” that pregnancy, to a certain extent, incapacitates us for 9 months each time. Yes, it’s possible to still work and carry on with life in that condition, but let’s face it, most of us would not be running any marathons in the third trimester or building houses or winning any fights should we be forced to defend ourselves. And afterward, it’s really hard to become a captain of industry when you have a toddler in tow. Meanwhile, a scary percentage of men  don’t provide the child support that they should, which forces many women into a level of poverty that they should never have to endure.

Other societal factions go to the opposite extreme and attempt to prevent us from having children even when we want them. Perhaps they have concerns about overpopulation. Maybe they view certain women as being unfit to reproduce. Eugenics is alive and well, as is forced sterilization.

We don’t discuss any of these topics nearly as often as we should. Even so, most women know that the struggle with these issues is worldwide. It is the ultimate power play to make our voices go unheard.

We Americans are taught to believe that we have more freedom than any other people on earth, but that’s a lie. Our health care system is abysmal for starters, which undermines this country’s very foundation. And the illusion that women’s rights are taken seriously has been challenged by the fact that there is such an insane pay gap between genders, and to make matters worse, Roe vs. Wade has always been under threat and has now been overturned. We should not overlook the fact that men’s bodies are not restricted in any way by legislation, and they never will be.

I haven’t felt like an American citizen since that moment when my right to choose was stripped from me, and I doubt I ever will feel like one again. Women, in general, are only tolerated if they can be controlled. And what better way to restrict a woman than by taking control of a bodily function?

Keeping us from talking to one another is a part of that control. We don’t seem to notice it as much as the reproductive rights issue, but it’s still pervasive. Men still hang out. They go to bars, they watch sports. It’s much less accepted when women do those things. Instead, we’re kept so busy that we barely notice that we don’t get together very often. We’re expected to stay home and make sandwiches and change diapers. At work we are pitted against one another, fighting over what few breadcrumbs the men see fit to toss in our direction. This, too, is a form of control.

It is important for each one of us to think about the things that tie us down and the things that allow us to fly. We could fly a lot higher if we were more cohesive, but ultimately, each woman has to choose her own path and remember that as she does so, she is also forging a better path for the young women of the future. If things remain as they are, these changes will be so incremental that we’ll barely notice them in our lifetimes. And it’s quite obvious that we’re more than capable of backsliding. We must remain vigilant if we want to make any progress at all.

I won’t tell you what the women in the movie decide to do. You’ll have to see for yourself. I will tell you that the real life women in Bolivia have made entirely different choices. I’ll discuss that in the next post.

I urge you to see Women Talking. I was disappointed that it didn’t win an Oscar for best picture, but it was up against some stiff competition. As with life, timing can be everything.

I will leave you with this: The last sentence in the movie, spoken by a woman to an infant, is, “your story will be different from ours.” It is up to us to determine whether that will be good news or bad, but I’m choosing to look at it as cause for hope.

Three cheers for differences.

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Minding My Own Business. Not.

I had to try.

Anyone who knows me well can tell you that, when properly motivated, I can be a buttinsky to a shockingly inappropriate degree. Sometimes it gets me into trouble. Sometimes it causes unintended damage and/or hurt feelings. Sometimes I get it all wrong.

It’s just that I can’t stand to see someone bullied. I can’t sit still when I think I’m witnessing some form of injustice. And false accusations make me want to scream.

I think the reason I am so adamant about standing up for people is that, all too often, no one stood up for me during my weakest, most vulnerable moments. If I can prevent even one person from experiencing that kind of pain, it’s worth it. One second of averting future psychological damage makes up for all the times I’ve stuck my neck out for someone, only to have my head figuratively handed back to me for my trouble.

There’s nothing worse than feeling like you’re being attacked, and looking around at all the witnesses, only to find that they are suddenly engrossed in inspecting their shoes. I don’t know how people do that. It’s not in me.

Don’t get me wrong: Standing up for someone does not mean reinforcing their false accusations or beliefs because you usually like that person. It also doesn’t mean propping up someone’s inaccurate conclusions, even if they are dear friends. And that’s where I often get into trouble.

Standing up for others means taking a personal stand about what you feel is right and just and morally and literally true. It’s about having personal integrity everywhere you go. It’s about saying the emperor has no clothes when that’s what you see. Even if someone you love dearly insists that the clothes are indeed there, you stand your ground unless you are provided with evidence that contradicts what you know in the very marrow of your bones.

A friend once accused another friend of mine of being hostile and rude and irrationally cruel to him. It was a he said/she said situation. I wasn’t there. But I’ve known both of these people for well over a decade, and the accusation sounded nothing like the woman I had been talking to on a daily basis for all that time. I doubt this woman even squashes spiders. She has consistently shown herself to be polite, kind, and considerate of others. I have never seen her lose her temper. Not once. Calling her hostile is as improbable as calling Trump intelligent. That, and she had zero motive for being hostile to him, as he was only passing on a message that I wouldn’t be there that evening as planned.

In contrast, my accusing friend, as much as I love him, has demonstrated that he often draws irrational conclusions, especially when under the influence of something. And he’s also stubborn. So even when you confront him with the information once a cooler head should prevail, and even when he is unable to provide a shred of evidence, he tends to double down on his belief, and gets downright hostile about it himself. I’ve seen him lose his temper on multiple occasions.

In fact, he got hostile to the point of saying really cruel things to me, and insisting that I had to choose between the two of them. So who would you choose? It seems rather obvious to me, even though it made me sad. I chose the friend who has always been kind. And she remains kind to this day. On the other hand, the accusing friend occasionally pops up and leaves a nasty message on my blog, to remind me, I suppose, that he’s still feeling hostile. As if that will make him more palatable as a friend. As if his hostility will somehow convince me to see it his way and agree my other friend is hostile. It makes me sad.

Maturity has not tempered my need to take these stands. It has, though, taught me to be a little more subtle about it, when possible. Sometimes people don’t realize that they’re making an a$$ of themselves, and it doesn’t pay to broadcast that, unless doing so will prevent others from acting in kind.

For example, the other day I witnessed something, and I had to speak up. It was at the local YMCA where I swim 4 days a week. After a while, once you’ve established a routine like that, you tend to start recognizing those whose routines intersect with yours. I’m cordial with these people. Some I get to know better, and some are only passing acquaintances that might exchange comments about the weather with me.

I have made several friends at the Y, but I tend to give people their space unless they indicate a desire to go beyond surface pleasantries. After all, they’re not there for me. And that’s fine.

On the day in question, in the swim lane beside mine, there was a man in his early 40’s and a boy who was about 10. I’ve chatted with them before, so I know this is a father and son, and they come to the pool in an effort to lose weight. Good for them. Clearly this is a father who cares about his son’s health.

We exchanged smiles and nothing more. But as I was exercising, I overheard the father calling his son a loser. He was using a teasing tone of voice. (I think they had been racing, and the kid, of course, lost.) But the father kept saying, loudly, and with a smile on his face, “Loser. Looooooser!”

I understand that this is the teasing dynamic that many guys use with one another, but that doesn’t make it right. It got to me. Not that I was ever called a loser by a family member. But there were other names and criticisms which stuck. Sometimes people don’t realize how much words can hurt. They don’t realize how labels stick to you. They think that as long as their intentions are good, and their love is there, unspoken, then they can say anything they want to say and that will be okay.

But it’s not. It’s not. Why are we so willing to say cruel things to the people we love when we’d never say those things to a stranger? It makes me sad.

I swam a few laps, trying to figure out what to do or say, because I knew I was going to say something. I didn’t want to say anything in front of the kid. Hadn’t he been humiliated enough for one day? What to do. What to do…

And that’s when another guy came along who looked identical to the father, and he jumped in their swim lane. The three of them sort of played in the pool for a while, and I could tell that there was affection all around. That’s good.

At one point, the father and son were down in the deep end, and the other guy was in the shallow, so I quietly said to him, “Is that your nephew? He’s an awesome kid.”

He smiled and said, “Yes he is. And yes, he is.”

I said, “I heard his dad call him a loser earlier. I’m sure he didn’t mean anything by it, but words can hurt. I hope he’ll rethink that, because, speaking from experience, the therapy later in life can get pretty darned expensive.”

He said that he found that concerning, and thanked me.

I went about my day, knowing the situation could play out in several ways. 1) The uncle might decide that it’s too awkward to say anything, but perhaps he’ll be even kinder to the nephew to make up for his brother’s name calling. 2) The uncle might speak up to his brother and he’ll either take it well and maybe try to stop with the name calling, or he’ll get defensive and think less of his brother or of me, but will at least have heightened awareness of what he’s doing. Or, finally , and most likely, 3)The second I turned away the uncle shook his head and blew me off.

Here in the Pacific Northwest, people are, if anything, too good at minding their own business. I knew if I didn’t speak up, no one else would. But at the same time, it’s truly not my business, and I don’t know how this family behaves under any other circumstances. Maybe I made too much of it, and caused an awkward situation for no good reason. Or maybe it was something that needed to be said.

Did I do harm or good? I’ll never know. But I had to try.

A Positive Spin on a Fighting Spirit

We need more righteous fighters.

When someone I love very much was young, she was so much like me that it was scary. When something frustrated or angered her, you’d hear about it. Big time. We used to say that she should become a lawyer because she loved to argue so much.

Frankly, in her youth she could be a pain in the ass. Just like I frequently have been and probably always will be, as needed. And I know what a hard row to hoe that can be. You’ll be told you push back too much. People often don’t appreciate it at all. It can get you into trouble. I didn’t want that for her. But people have a tendency to be who they are.

Don’t misunderstand. We don’t have anger issues. We don’t rage about nothing. We don’t scream at cashiers. Far from it. We get righteously indignant when we see injustice. We speak out when others are afraid to. We stick up for the underdog. If something needs changing, we try to change it. We want the world to be much more fair than it will ever be.

What do you do with that energy when you have a fighting spirit? How do you keep it from burning you from the inside out? How do you avoid getting ulcers, or imploding under the sheer weight of your frustration?

Me, I blog. I write about the things that frustrate me. I try to educate others. I shine lights on the cockroaches of this world.

But the other day I realized that my loved one, now in her 30’s, has taken her fighting spirit and turned it into something even more positive. She is an educator and an unflinching advocate for children with special needs. She fights to get them every ounce of education that they so richly deserve and are capable of. She makes sure that they are not discounted or overlooked as so many children in this group tend to be.

She is a fighter still. But she uses her force for good. And I couldn’t be more proud.

I truly believe we need more righteous fighters in this world. It may not look pretty, but somebody’s got to do it.

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Whale-Sized Karma

You’ll get yours, eventually. Maybe.

I’ve been thinking quite a lot about karma of late. To oversimplify, it means that whatever happens to you happens because of your actions. It’s a comforting theory. Be good, and good things will happen to you. Be bad, and you’ll get yours, eventually.

There are days when my belief in karma is the only thing that keeps me from imploding under the sheer weight of my righteous indignation. I may have been screwed over by despicable people (most notably, Andy Johnson), and I may be able to do very little about it other than shine a light on them through this blog, but I have to believe that, by dint of the rot in their very souls, they’re going to get tripped up sooner or later.

But mine is a scientific mind, and so I know on some level that this is all magical thinking. It would be wonderful if justice were that straightforward, but quite often it is not. The world is a random, chaotic place, and we aren’t in control at all. Not even a little bit.

Because of this, I know that a lot of the politicians who have perpetrated so much hate, discord and crime in recent years will get off scot-free. The insurrectionist traitors who stormed our capitol may be pursued and tried, but no sentences will be enough to pay for what they’ve done to this country. My only hope is that they keep making idiotic choices that come back to bite them in the butt, hopefully without taking any more lives with them in the process. (Five was already too many.)

Karma. A nice dream. I’ll leave you with a true story that is either the most beautiful example of karma or the most beautiful example of the random and chaotic essence of our world. You’ll have to decide for yourself.

_________________________________________

This is the story of the Essex. It was an American whaleship that, on August 12, 1819, sailed out of Nantucket, MA and straight into infamy. In my opinion, the only vessel worse (and in fact it’s much, much worse) than a whaler is a slave ship. The horrors we humans can visit upon this world never cease to amaze me.

But this last journey of the Essex would turn out to be either karma or chaos for its crew. The 21 men anticipated a 2 ½ year trip to catch whales in the South Pacific. But within 2 days their bad luck began when they ran into a storm that nearly sank the ship and damaged the sail as well as destroying two of the six whaleboats, and damaging a third. Captain Pollard chose to press on without getting replacements.

They hunted for whales that following spring and summer, and eventually made it to what is now Ecuador. Running out of whales to slaughter, they decided to go further south and west, where there was very little land, and that land was rumored to be inhabited by cannibals. But hey, there should be more whales there, so why not?

They stopped in at the Galapagos Islands, where they managed to take 360 giant tortoises aboard alive, thinking these creatures could go a year without food and water, and they could simply eat them as needed. These tortoises immediately began to starve. But, hey, the crew got to eat really well for a while there.

While island hopping for tortoises, a helmsman thought it would be funny to set fire to an island. That fire raged out of control and burned every living plant and animal to death, leaving a desolated, ash-covered wasteland and driving two species to near extinction. (The Floreana Island tortoise and the Floreana mockingbird, because I know you’ll ask.)

When they reached their whaling grounds, the first whale they saw came up under one of the whaleboats and completely shattered it. That left them with three.

During the next hunt one of the boats was damaged, again by a whale, and had to go back to the ship for repairs. Both of the others harpooned whales and were dragged by them over the horizon.

Those who were on the ship noticed a whale as long as their vessel acting really weird. It was just lying there on the surface, staring at them. And then it charged them and rammed the ship. The current theory is that the whale heard the hammering that was going on to repair the whaleboat, and it sounded like a rival bull sperm whale’s echolocation to him. We’ll never know.

Needless to say, ramming the ship stunned the whale. The crew thought of harpooning it, but was afraid that this would cause the whale to thrash and might damage the ship further. The whale finally perked up and swam away.

And then it turned. It was now facing the ship’s bow. It charged again, at twice its normal speed, and hit the Essex head on, shattering the bow. The crew scrambled to put provisions into the half repaired whaleboat when the captain’s whaleboat showed up. That must have come as one heck of a shock to the Captain.

Needless to say, the ship was toast. There were 20 crew members (one had deserted) to divide between, basically, 2 ½ boats. And they were in the middle of nowhere. The closest land was the Marquesas Islands, and that’s where Captain Pollard wanted to go, but his crew remembered those cannibal rumors, and wanted to go back to South America instead, which was twice as far away. And that’s what they tried to do, bailing all the while.

There was very little food and water to begin with, but the situation was made worse when most of the food got soaked by seawater, which of course rendered it very salty, which meant that every time they ate, they became more dehydrated and thirsty. (I’m getting thirsty just writing about it.) They soon resorted to drinking their own urine.

By a huge stroke of luck, a month later they landed on a deserted atoll called Henderson Island. Ironically, it’s situated just 120 miles from Pitcairn Island, where the descendants of the 1789 Bounty mutineers still live to this day.

On Henderson, the crew was able to find fresh water, and ate birds, crabs, eggs, and peppergrass. But they pretty much had wiped out the island within a week, and decided to move on. Three men remained behind, and actually managed to survive for a year before being rescued.

The other 17 men, in their 2 ½ boats, attempted to head to Easter Island. Within a week they once again ran out of food, and were only left with saltwater soaked bread yet again. They totally missed Easter Island, and began to die one by one.

The first two that died were buried at sea. One boat, carrying three men, got separated from the other two, and it is assumed it was the whaleboat later found washed up on Ducie Island with three skeletons inside.

As the last 12 started dying, some were eaten by their crewmates. So the people scared of encountering cannibals became cannibals themselves. Imagine.

By February, they were out of bodies to eat and were forced to draw lots as to who would be sacrificed. The ironically named Owen Coffin, the 17-year-old first cousin of Captain Pollard, drew the short straw. To Pollard’s credit, he offered to take his place, but Coffin felt that his lot wasn’t any worse than theirs. His best friend on the ship shot him.

The two remaining boats became separated, and one was rescued 89 days after the Essex had sunk. On it were three survivors.

Four days later, when Pollard’s boat was finally rescued, nearly in sight of South America, he and another crewman were so delirious, and so desperately sucking on the bones of dead men, they didn’t even notice the ship draw near, and were extremely terrified when they finally did.

So 8 men survived, and 7 bodies were eaten. But here’s what I find even more astounding. After all that trauma, all 8 men were back at sea within a few months. Captain Pollard kept having such bad luck at sea that eventually no one would sail with him, and he had to retire to Nantucket.

Nantucket is a small place, and he had to share it with the mother of the cousin whom he had eaten. Needless to say, relationships were rather strained. He became a night watchman. He would lock himself up in his room and fast every year on the anniversary of the sinking of the Essex. He never married or had children. He lived to be 78.

The first mate, Owen Chase, also survived, and went on to write a book about the experience, which inspired Herman Melville to write Moby Dick. Chase had a very successful sailing career as a sea captain, and eventually built his own whaler. He also had many wives and many children. But the ordeal haunted him, and he was eventually institutionalized after he was found to be hiding food in the attic of his Nantucket house. He lived to be 73.

All the other survivors, save one, lived long lives and died in a variety of sailor ways. And so it goes. Karma? Chaos? Or just the circle of life?

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Justice Despite Roadblocks

Finally, a returning is taking place.

In the 1880’s the US government gave the Jesuits 525 acres, scattered here and there in South Dakota, according to this article. The purpose was to make churches and cemeteries on the land. But that land has become more and more sparsely populated over time, and the Jesuits found no use for it after a certain point. The mission stations they built were serving no one, and nothing further was being constructed.

As per usual out west, the government really had no right to give away this land in the first place. Every single plot of land is located within the Rosebud reservation. The Rosebud Sioux are part of the Lakota people, and currently about 15,000 of them live on the reservation.

So the Jesuits decided it was time to return this land to its rightful owners. (One wonders if they would have done so if the had been able to find a use for it, and also how much money, if any, they’re saving in property taxes by getting rid of it, but that’s just my cynicism coming out to play.)

Apparently the property transfer will conclude in May, but the Jesuits have been trying to do this for at least 5 years. The efforts kept hitting brick walls in the Bureau of Indian Affairs. It beggars the imagination if there is a more obstructionist governmental bureaucracy on earth, in my opinion.

But, regardless of the motivations, it is nice that, when all is said and done, the right thing is finally going to happen. Finally, a returning is taking place. As the great Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”

And now, a tiny bit more land.

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A Most Solemn Occasion

Why did it take 168 years to break this glass funerial ceiling?

Today Ruth Bader Ginsberg will be the first woman to ever lie in state at the US Capitol. And she has really earned that right. She fought for justice her entire adult life, and has done much to significantly increase women’s rights. She’s a personal hero of mine.

Because of RBG, women can have credit cards in their own names. Women can establish their own credit history and buy property in their own names. We can play sports in school. We can consent to our own medical treatment. Because of her, women in the military who get pregnant can both keep the child and keep the job. Military women also get the same family benefits as their male counterparts because of her.

Younger women have the luxury of taking all of the above for granted because of RBG. We older women know better. Women’s rights are tenuous at best, and there are people actively working to roll them back even as you read this. Many of those people are women themselves, and that’s a contradiction that I’ll never be able to wrap my head around as long as I live.

Think of this. Distinguished people have had the opportunity to have their coffins displayed in the Capitol since 1852. That’s 168 years. And in that entire time, only 2 females have been accorded such a privilege. The first was Rosa Parks in 2005. Again, she definitely earned that honor. But since she did not work for the government, she was said to be “lying in honor”, not “lying in state”. She was guarded by Capitol Police. Whereas Justice Ginsberg will be guarded the military. Sadly, because of the pandemic, the general public will not be able to be present at the ceremony.

But lying in that powerful building is a distinction that more women should be accorded. I cannot believe that only two women in 168 years have broken this glass funerial ceiling. This is the 21st century, after all. I can’t help but wonder what Justice Ginsberg would think.

I know, like all of us, she would be horrified to see her legacy besmirched by having the next justice rammed through in a few short weeks when it took an average of two months to confirm all the current sitting justices. I’m sure she’s spinning in her grave thinking that they’re going to confirm someone in an election year when the Republicans forced a slot to remain vacant for 8 months during the last election year. The hypocrisy is too much to bear.

If that really happens, then there truly is no justice. And RBG would be heartbroken to hear me say that. It’s the last thing she would want. In fact, those were her dying words: “My most fervent wish is that I not be replaced until a new president is installed.”

I wish I had the opportunity to meet Justice Ginsberg in person. I wish I could be at the Capitol right now, to pay my respects. All I can do is hope that she rests in peace and in power, and that future generations will see all these political dirty tricks for what they are.

Rosa Parks, Lying in Honor, 2005

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Mid-Month Marvel: The Innocence Network

Given our current atmosphere, I can think of no better organization to highlight this month.

A recurring theme in this blog is the celebration of people and/or organizations that have a positive impact on their communities. What they do is not easy, but it’s inspirational, and we don’t hear enough about them. So I’ve decided to commit to singing their praises at least once a month. I’ll be calling it Mid-Month Marvels. If you have any suggestions for the focus of this monthly spotlight, let me know in the comments below!

Given our current atmosphere, I can think of no better organization to highlight this month than The Innocence Network. This is a network of 55 U.S organizations and 12 international organizations that are working to redress the causes of wrongful convictions. They do this by providing pro bono legal and investigative services to people seeking to prove their innocence.

Since the advent of DNA testing, there has been a shocking number of convictions that have had to be overturned. Part of police reform needs to be in the area of interrogations that obtain false confessions. It has also been shown that witnesses can be very unreliable or biased.

Hand in hand with wrongful convictions is the horrifying amount of police brutality. According to this network’s home page, between 2013 and 2019, police violence in the US lead to the deaths of 7,666 people, most of whom were black. This network also directed me to a very sobering website called MappingPoliceViolence.org, which states that 1,098 people were killed by police in 2019, and that there were only 27 days that entire year where police did not kill someone.

Also, in 99 percent of the police killings from 2013 to 2019, police were not convicted of a crime. In 96 percent of them, they weren’t even charged with one. Yes, I imagine there are instances where they shouldn’t be charged, but come on. These are some very scary statistics.

The Innocence network has a page dedicated to ways you can get involved. Whether it be educating yourself and others, advocating for legislative reform, or fundraising for one of the local Innocence organizations, there are a variety of ways that you can make an impact.

At a time when many of us are feeling frustrated and ineffectual, fighting for justice for those who are still alive, and making a difference via the Innocence Network sounds like a fine idea to me. I hope you agree.

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Do the Right Thing, Costa Rica

The eyes of the world are watching you.

I’ve never been to Costa Rica. I hope to go there someday. In my mind, I’ve always thought of that country as a neutral, benevolent, safe place. Sort of a “foreign travel light” kind of location. A place to go if you want to experience a different climate and culture without really venturing too far out of your comfort zone.

But now I’m wondering if that image isn’t terribly skewed. Based on what I’m reading in a Reuters article entitled, “Indigenous leader killed in Costa Rica, second in a year”, there are tensions. There is violence. And there seems to be a great deal of injustice.

According to this brief article, Costa Rica passed a law back in 1977 that states that its 24 legally recognized indigenous groups are entitled to reclaim lands taken from their ancestors, but the law has never been implemented. This is an outrage. And now that the indigenous groups are fighting back, two men, so far, have been killed.

Just as the primary cause of divorce tends to be finances, the primary cause of regional discord tends to be land. And land, when all is said and done, boils down to finances. It’s how and where people live, how they eat, and how their families survive. It’s an emotionally charged situation.

But in this case, it seems pretty clear cut. Costa Rica passed this law. Costa Rica needs to enforce it. The land should be restored to its proper owners. And murder should be treated as murder. You have no right to kill someone just because you don’t like it when they’re demanding their rights.

Costa Rica, you can’t expect to see any of my tourism dollars until you do the right thing by these people. I’m sure I’m not alone in that sentiment. The eyes of your people, and the eyes of the world, are watching you.

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