07/15/2022
 
Libertarian Party National Headquarters
1444 Duke Street
Alexandria, VA  22314
 
Dear Libertarian Party HQ,
 
I am writing again (see letter from May) to ask you to REALLY fight for our bodily autonomy.  It is a phrase that has been employed by my party to protest face masks in a global pandemic, but there has been a deafening silence when it comes to Reproductive Freedom.  Since I wrote that letter in May, the Supreme Court has ruled in exactly the way the leaked decision said they would.  As I stated before: “the majority opinion of the Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade shows in chilling detail just how autocratic, just how oppressive, just how misogynist the current Supreme Court has become…My party should be up in arms.  Instead, my party, the party of principle, the party of freedom, chooses to focus on anything, literally anything else.”
 
In the Libertarian Response to the State of the Union, which omitted any words supporting reproductive freedom LNC Chair Whitney Bilyeu spoke of the “heavy hand of government”, she spoke of “the use of force, coercion and theft to control and manipulate us, turning us against one another” and there is no better example of this than the oppressive laws being passed in state after state offering rewards to Americans who turn in doctors and pregnant women who will be jailed for using or providing this basic essential medical service.  These laws will not affect the rich, or the well connected, just poor desperate women who are harassed and harangued at the entrances to women’s health clinics.  I was told by the communications director in February that this is a “Federal Government issue”.  And the Texas LP was addressing the Texas law.  It is NOW a “federal issue”.  A bodily autonomy issue that twenty-six state governments are energetically destroying.  I like to say we, the Libertarians, are pro-choice on everything, but the focus of the Libertarian’s harsh criticism in the light of recent events has NOT been on protecting this fundamental human right, my party is SILENT.  The Libertarian Party must take a strong pro-choice position.  I ask again, if not us, then who?
 
I would appreciate a response to this letter outlining how my party is planning to end this despicable silence. 

Sincerely yours,  Catherine G. Tripp, Libertarian Silver Member and Monthly Contributor

​05/04/2022
 
Libertarian Party National Headquarters
1444 Duke Street
Alexandria, VA  22314
 
Dear Libertarian Party HQ,
 
I am writing to ask you to shift your PR focus to loudly and proudly opposing the full on attack on Reproductive Freedom that is going on nation-wide.  I have sent three emails regarding this issue, and am most dissatisfied with the response so far.  I have read and reviewed the Liberty Pledge Newsletter, the various email communications for the last six months, and the Party’s silence is deafening.   Whining about a piece of cloth over the nose and mouth while nearly a million Americans have died from the pandemic – hey – I don’t like mandates either.  But how about the mandate that a victim of rape is forced by her government to bring that rapist’s child to term?  How about the mandate that doctors who perform this essential medical service be sent to jail, or in some cases targeted for execution?
 
The recent leak of the majority opinion of the Supreme Court draft ruling overturning Roe v. Wade shows in chilling detail just how autocratic, just how oppressive, just how misogynist the current Supreme Court has become.  And it was the Court’s latest 98 page screed against human rights that motivated me to write this letter.  My party should be up in arms.  Instead, my party, the party of principle, the party of freedom, chooses to focus on anything, literally anything else.
 
In the Libertarian Response to the State of the Union, which omitted any words supporting reproductive freedom LNC Chair Whitney Bilyeu spoke of the “heavy hand of government”, she spoke of “the use of force, coercion and theft to control and manipulate us, turning us against one another” and there is no better example of this than the oppressive laws being passed in state after state offering rewards to Americans who turn in doctors and pregnant women who will be jailed for using or providing this basic essential medical service.  These laws will not affect the rich, or the well connected, just poor desperate women who are harassed and harangued at the entrances to women’s health clinics.  And yet, not one word.  Not one word in your latest missive bemoaning the Federal Reserve.  Or the one before that where somehow we are concerned about Disney’s fight with the government of Florida?  Both parties to this kerfuffle have all the resources they need to solve it without our help, certainly more resources than the poor women of this country, who will be forced to bring every pregnancy to term.
 
I wrote to the communications department on September 10, 2021 in response to the press release September titled “Libertarian Party Reaction to Biden’s Six Point COVID-19 Mitigation Plan”.  Therein was stated “However, what is not up for debate is the right of bodily autonomy”.  Really?  It’s not like pregnancy is contagious, but if the ugly attacks on procreation-related bodily autonomy continue, terminating a pregnancy could well be deadly.  And yet, not a word.  So, I emailed this:  <<As a lifelong member of the Libertarian Party, I am writing to tell you how disappointing this message is.  If only my party could summon up this sort of passion and outrage over the attacks on reproductive rights as you do on opposing public health initiatives, I would be proud.>>.  The response was:  <<I assume you're referring to the Texas abortion law that went into effect this month. Typically we limit our responses to actions by the Federal government, as there is too much going on in the fifty states for our limited staff to address. However, we are currently adding staff and building out our communications department, so we are optimistic that the situation will change in the near future.>>.  A Federal Government issue?  No.  A human rights issue.  A bodily autonomy issue that twenty-six state governments are energetically destroying.
 
I wrote to lphq (LP Headquarters) again in October in response to the Anti Mandate Ad.  I quoted the Ad “We will not leave the American people with nowhere to turn”, to which I added “but you will leave Texan women with nowhere to run.  My party should be focusing on Reproductive rights, not this nasty attack on our President.”
 
Then in February, when I received the Job Notification for Development Director, I wrote “Gosh, I hope they care more about reproductive freedom than some cotton mask on their face.”
 
So, you see, I have been trying to get my party to support reproductive choice unequivocally, strongly and without reservation for several months.  And I have not, in past years (again, I joined the Libertarian Party in 1976) criticized my party’s positions.  I like to say we are pro-choice on everything, but the focus of the Libertarian’s harsh criticism in the light of recent events has NOT been on protecting this fundamental human right.  You don’t even mention it. 
 
In the Party Platform, we state:
1.5 Abortion
Recognizing that abortion is a sensitive issue and that people can hold good-faith views on all sides, we believe that government should be kept out of the matter, leaving the question to each person for their conscientious consideration.
 
And honestly, that’s a little mealy-mouthed as well.  It’s not a sensitive issue.  It is an equality issue – this plank ignores the fact that women, and not men, are being forced against their will to support fetal life.  Yes, the government should stay out of the matter, but right now, they are gleefully wading in like jack booted thugs.  The Libertarian Party must take a strong pro-choice position  -  if not us, then who?  Protecting an individual’s right to choose whether or not to procreate is our fundamental duty.  And it’s time we lived up to it.
 
Sincerely yours,

Catherine G. Tripp
Libertarian Silver Member and Monthly Contributor

​Into the raw dark
 
I cast my thoughts
 
Happiness was just there
 
Skittering briefly through neural pathways
 
Like mercury without the poison
 
I would grasp it and work it into the defiant fur
 
Of my favorite cat
 
Then in the back of my mind
 
I bank the glowing embers of a warm contentment
 
Knowing that even in the land of endless summer
 
Storms will come
 
And she will blink, my familiar
 
Silver balls lit with moonlight drop once again into my hands
 
We will leave this home office and dance to the tunes only we hear
 
Spinning out the fear
 
Into the raw dark

This poem was chosen for publication in An Evening with Emily Dickenson by Wingless Dreamer in June of 2021.  Here is an excerpt from the poem by Emily Dickinson that inspired it:  "Long years apart - can make no
Breach a second cannot fill -..."

You can read my recently published short story about Pele's sister Kapo and her amazing abilities in the form of a letter from Emmalani's governess at the Reedsy website (click on the first link below), or here on my website, in the Short Stories section, (click on the second link below). There, below the story, I've posted pages from a textbook on Hawaiian Mythology for context.   Here is an excerpt:  
"These Hawaiians are great athletes, though their sports would terrify our polo players.  Years ago, a great slide or Lua was built down the slopes of Mauna Loa (the Long Mountain) all the way to sea.  Daring boys and girls lay down upon heavy boards and rode many kilometers, picking up speed and once in the ocean, they take to riding the waves. Honestly, Annie, mermaids are a pale and fragile myth compared to these ocean loving natives....At the Talk Story, I learned that their goddess Pele had sisters, one of whom was called Kapo. This goddess had a most unusual talent.  I am struggling to convey what I heard at that meeting in Waipio for it involves a woman’s’ private parts...."  

Naiveté and innocence interweave
         beneath her dark exterior.
And she continues to relate to me the woes of her friends.
 
Doesn’t she realize how beautiful she is?
Long, thick black hair caresses her lithe, athlete’s form.
Pure clear brown eyes pierce my mind
         and something in me cringes.
She must see right through my false identities,
         yet she continues her idle chatter of nothing in particular.
How could this child have been raised so unaware 
         of her own elegant beauty?
To tell her might be to spoil her attractive modesty.
 
She looks down and lowers her eyelids frequently.
She does not take compliments easily.
Shyness becomes her.
 
Sweet lady, she is always being asked to speak up
​and fears her soft voice to be one of the countless faults she curses herself with.
 
I’ll stay with her for now, be her friend for a short period more, but she will outgrow me.
         Soon; I feel it
                  She will come into her own.
But I’ll always remember her as she is now: unspoiled, without conceit, shy and beautiful.

​Manufacturing concerns
All painted on a brick wall
As if it would last.
Now with windows smashed
and plywood-covered entrances
Gutted reminders of failure
The sky, in spite
remains blue.
Unyielding azure.

​I love being in a crowd of coiffed and powdered ladies
the scents of laces and places
Murmurings and quiet laughter
Rosewater and memories
Not many locals on this ferry to San Francisco
We travel quietly, smugly
Amid the hushed excitement of no-hurry honeymooners
So delighted to be here
Me, too.
When our tourist guests head back to their Mobile Home Estates and Golf Link Tracts with pictures, T-shirts, bread loaves and chocolate, I'll still be here
living inside your postcards

​When I learned that the Rolling Stones big hit “Mother’s Little Helper” was about Valium “though she’s not really ill, there’s a little yellow pill” and it was the most widely prescribed drug in the 1950’s, I nodded with understanding.  Almost jealous that doctors are not doing that now.  So many smart women forced into subservient stultifying roles – those were NOT the good old days.  On social media, I see photos of the women standing behind the Mango Mussolini and say “The town of Stepford called, they want their Robo Wives back” and I get likes and hahas.  But seriously, they scare me. 
 
Scary smart chicks should not be expected to face life sober.  The hostilities take many forms.  Derision, shouting, storming out, questioning, always questioning, our conclusions.  Libtard, Snowflake, Pollyanna – I am none of those things.  Gas lighting is the new sexist art form.  Fighting every single day to be heard, to have our advice heeded.
 
De-humanization on steroids, the last four years.  So I speak.  And I write checks to progressive candidates.  And I write letters to my elected representatives.  I ask my friends, “why do you think Fox Media and Sinclair Broadcasting keep handing you someone brown to hate?”  I argue that no person is illegal.  That we should be ashamed seeing asylum seekers arrested just for asking.  There was never any caravan from South America.  Cliven Bundy was no hero.  Kyle Rittenhouse is just another in a long line of murderous angry white men, egged on to crazed attacks on an enemy manufactured by xenophobic propagandists.  Clutching their un-read Bibles, they come wrapped in the flag, spewing hate.  The Confederacy, founded on de-humanization, on the ugly belief in the superiority of the Caucasian race.  And all too often, in the right of the Master to beat his wife, too.
 
And on January 6th, the violently misinformed beat a police officer to death with flag poles and fire extinguishers.  Those are the faces of our abusers.  Let us punish without mercy the ones who lied to them, and pointed them like bayonets at the Union

​          When I was in college, for one of my classes in world history, I was assigned a textbook called “Herstory – the underside of History”.   The premise is that human history has been written by the victors, men who for many years denied literacy to women.  I began a critical examination of the history we are taught in school – tales of geopolitical conquest, tales of religious wars, tales of pharaohs and emperors, and concluded that these chapters are actually not that important.  Not to our evolution as a species.  Cultural and scientific breakthroughs, changes in the definition of family, the fall of matriarchies and the rise of patriarchies – these are the truly historical events.  Lines drawn on a map, borders and country names changing as soldiers and warriors bled to crest a hill for the right to rename it – what we celebrate – it is all decidedly one-sided.  “Progress” towards this goal of complete subjugation of the natural world is actually taking the human race backwards.  The so-called Renaissance was the Dark Ages for woman’s rights – the Napoleonic Code and the blithe assumption that women are chattel was the opposite of a giant step forward for mankind.
 
            Possessing a left and right brain working at full capacity in a society willing to accept only one per gender, I find that logic, reason, intellect, numbers, analytical thinking are not expected from one who pines to take brush to paper and paint EVERY branch of those stark trees silhouetted by the sunset.  From one who works steadily at the art of turning a phrase like a lump on the potter's wheel, without knowing what shape it is going to take.  And I wonder how many half-uttered thoughts died a-borning' because some pitiful pre-programmed inadequacy department determined that no-one wanted to hear them? 
 
          So I take much of what has been written with a grain of salt.  There was a female Pharaoh named Hatshepsut who ruled one of most peaceful and abundant periods in Egyptian history.  Her name was literally erased from history – the hieroglyphics were chiseled out of the stone monuments and tablets, her name was not included in the lists of rulers.  I always picture that chisel and the chunks of stone where once there was wisdom whenever I read an account of the period I’ve been researching for the historical novel.  Important contributions, I assume, will have been left out if those contributions were made by women.

I just edited a poem I wrote in 1982, it was published in Das Tor (image attached) in 1984, time to dust it off, eh?  This one's for all of us who ride (or used to ride) the bus in San Francisco:

Bus Notes
Glancing up from my hard-to-come-by window seat
Her hands flipping pages slowly,
Mouth intoning, she holds her squirming child
Eyes rapt
Feet wriggling
LOVE
Reading a story, like going to the circus
Things bright and new
Not like every day, seats worn shiny
The worn handles grasped by many
Riding the Muni to work or home
 
Chinese ladies sport
Polyester mismatches
Pinks, oranges, squares, dots.
Two dozen eggs crated, their white rounded tips pressing
against clear orange cover
How will she get those home?
 
So many soft sleepy faces today.
More than my usual morning share though,
of handsome men on the 5 Fulton.
Thin leather shoes with matching laces
and tastefully wooden heels
Leading to silver gray slacks
The ever-present darker-than-navy blue sports jacket.
Splash of gray in his carefully manicured mustache
Active eyes, lids not lowered
Unusual on this always sleepy bus with refined resigned faces
Flash of white starched cuff
Strides purposefully away.
 
Did you know
you were being sketched?