Category: News

Women and the Presidential Election

October 26, 2012

Baby boomer aged women, including myself are struggling more in the recession than others, NBC News Economy Watch reports:

A generation of women who flooded the paid labor force in the 1970s has spent the past four decades overcoming a host of obstacles to win its fair share of the American economic pie.

But for many women now approaching what was to have been the end of their careers, the Great Recession has turned out to be the biggest obstacle of their lives.

The recession has been particularly hard for single boomer women like myself:

Incomes for single boomer women have lagged even further behind other households. Since 1970, median incomes for married couples with both spouses in the paid work force have risen steadily – up more than 40 percent to nearly $86,000 (as of 2009). One-income couples and households headed by single men saw little improvement, with median incomes rising to less than $50,000. For single women, the median income, after rising slowly since 1970, barely hit $29,000 in 2009.

While both candidates are working hard and heavy to court the woman’s vote, I personally believe that the candidate that will deliver more for women, including income equality, jobs, education, the right to choice, privacy and health care, is Barack Obama.

Mitt Romney will turn back the clock on women’s issues, and we boomer women can’t afford to go back to the 50’s.

Related Images:

International Women’s Day 2012: Watch Us Stand Strong

March 8, 2012

Today is International Women’s Day:

I wrote Watch Us Stand Strong in 1994. I’ve shared it here before but felt today was a good day to share it again:

Watch Us Stand Strong

Long have we walked
Through the valley of our sadness,
Searching for a way
To end all the madness.
Long have we toiled,
Silent and unnoticed,
Suppressing our knowledge
And our gift to heal the world.
We are large by number,
We are small through the ages,
There are few that have spoken,
Few that dare to read
Our pages.
We are mothers,
We are daughters,
We are sisters,
We are friends;
We contain the lifeblood,
And the passion
Of all the universe
In our souls.
We are women,
Full of knowledge,
And beauty;
The Queens of our planet.
We are home now,
Watch us stand strong,
It is time to heal
Our world.

Check here for 10 Ways to Celebrate International Women’s Day. I spent a good part of International Women’s Day outside in my yard enjoying to 70 degree day here on the river. A little time communing with the Great Mother Goddess is always balm to the soul.

Related Images:

Springsteen’s New Single: We Take Care Of Our Own (Video with Lyrics)

January 19, 2012

** Cross posted from The Democratic Daily…

Bruce Springsteen’s new single “We Take Care Of Our Own,” off his upcoming CD, Wrecking Ball was released today.

ABC News notes, “judging from the names of the other tracks listed on the singers website — “This Depression,” “Easy Money,” and “Death to My Hometown” — Springsteen is once again wading in political waters and returning his focus to working-class issues.”

“We Take Care Of Our Own” is a hard hitting rocker, in true Springsteen / E Street Band style. As longtime readers here know, I am a big Springsteen fan and I have to say this new single simply blew me away musically and lyrically.

Watch the video debut here: (more…)

Related Images:

British Soul Singer Amy Winehouse, Dies at 27

July 23, 2011

: Matt Dunham / AP

The so very troubled and talented Amy Winehouse is dead, at 27.

Amy Winehouse “found worldwide fame with a sassy, hip-hop-inflected take on retro soul, yet became a tabloid fixture as her problems with drugs and alcohol led to a strikingly public career collapse.” She was found dead today in her London apartment, the police said.

Although the cause of death is at this point “unknown,” the news of Winehouse’s death stunned me and made me feel a sense heartbreak that she had most likely lost her battle with drugs and alcohol. (more…)