Want a cat?

My girlfriend Kathy has just rescued a female, five year old cat that was dumped outdoors. As she was caring for the cat and petting it outside, the owner came up and admitted to dumping it, and she indicated that the cat was spayed and litter trained, and had always been an indoor cat. Kathy is taking the cat to a vet for a check up, but unfortunately can’t take it in herself because she already cares for and fosters numerous cats for FACE. If you live around the Indianapolis area, and you’d like to take in this warm, friendly refugee, please let me know.

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The Magdalene Laundries and the Catholic Church

The Catholic Church has a lot more to answer for than abuse of altar boys. For years the Catholic Church in Ireland enslaved young women in “Magdalene laundries” run by convents, where they were unpaid prisoners forced to work their entire lives for the Church. The last of these laundries closed in 1996.

Ireland’s Dirty Laundry
Wounds Still Fresh For Thousands of Women Enslaved by the Catholic Church
By Hilary Brown and Matt McGarry

C O R K, Ireland, Jan. 26
— A sudden spate of TV exposés, docudramas and a major motion picture have brought to light one of the most shocking episodes in the history of the Catholic Church in Ireland — the existence of the now-notorious “Magdalene laundries,” a sanctified form of slavery.

Operated by the Sisters of the Magdalene Order, the laundries were virtual slave labor camps for generations of young girls thought to be unfit to live in Irish society.

Girls who had become pregnant, even from rape, girls who were illegitimate, or orphaned, or just plain simple-minded, girls who were too pretty and therefore in “moral danger” all ran the risk of being locked up and put to work, without pay, in profit-making, convent laundries, to “wash away their sins.”

They were completely cut off from their families, and many lost touch with them forever.

Stripped of their identities, the girls were given numbers instead of names. They were forbidden to speak, except to pray. If they broke any rule or tried to escape, the nuns beat them over the head with heavy iron keys, put them into solitary confinement or shipped them off to a mental hospital.

Over a period of 150 years, an estimated 30,000 women were forced into this brutal penance, carried out in secret, behind high convent walls.

Towards the end of the 20th century, the laundries began to close, as the power of the Church in Ireland diminished and as social attitudes became less puritanical. Incredibly, the last Magdalene laundry to shut down was in 1996.

‘We Were the Living Dead’

Mary Norris, 69, was committed to a convent laundry in Cork for two years. An articulate, intelligent woman, she was transferred from an orphanage at age 15 because she was “disobedient.” Her number was 30.

On one occasion, she said, the nuns actually ordered the girls to pray for those held in Soviet prison camps, a bitter irony, as she considers the convent laundries “an Irish gulag.”

Though it was clearly very painful for her, she took us around the convent — now abandoned — where she had suffered so much.

“In the winter, it was freezing cold, and in the summer, it was like the desert, it was so hot with the steam,” she said. “We were the living dead. We weren’t treated as human beings, as individuals. We were just part of the workforce. Nothing more, nothing less.”

Guilt by Illegitimacy

Sadie Williams, 64, spent a total of four years in two different convent laundries. She was 14 when she was virtually kidnapped by two women who had determined that she was “in moral danger.” Williams liked to take a walk in the evenings, after working all day at a bed and breakfast in Dublin. She said the women considered her much too attractive to stay out of trouble.

She was only 14 when she ended up in a convent laundry outside town as “Number 100,” and locked into a cell each night. She says she almost never saw daylight.

“Oh, it was dreadful,” she said. “I cried and cried all the time, and kept asking why, why wasn’t I getting out. And I would write begging letters to my mother. When I finally got out, she was already dead and buried three years. But I was never told, even though I was writing, still writing letters to her.”

She has since learned that the nuns stopped all her mail. Her mother wasn’t married, so Sadie was considered to be guilty of the sin of illegitimacy.

No Apology

There have been no direct reparations from the Irish Catholic Church to the tens of thousands of women it used as slave labor. Nor has there been a formal apology. It’s not even known how many victims of the Magdalene laundries are still alive: they are not organized, and many don’t want to talk about this terrible part of their past.

Very few Churchmen in Ireland will comment on the scandal. An exception is Willie Walsh, the Bishop of Killaloe. Over a cup of tea in his residence, he said that it is “a source of pain and shame.”

“These girls were rejected by society, and the Church in some way thought it was giving refuge to these girls,” he says. “I suppose … the Magdalene laundries was in some instances a form of slavery.”

The Rev. Patrick O’Donovan is more outspoken.

“It’s an appalling scandal,” he says. “You could compare them to concentration camps. … The nuns thought they were doing good. … They didn’t realize the damage they were doing.”

Mary Norris has campaigned to have a simple memorial built in the convent where she was held. Thirty names are engraved on a simple headstone; dating from 1876 to 1973. Some women spent their entire lives in these institutions. Having been cut off from their families, they had nowhere to go.

Norris says she no longer hates the nuns who oppressed her. “If I hated them,” she says, “they’d still be winning. They’d still have control over me.”

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What’s Your Professor Poopypants New Name?

Follow the instructions to find your new name. The following is an excerpt from a children’s book, “Captain Underpants and the Perilous Plot of Professor Poopypants” by Dave Pilkey: The evil Professor forces everyone to assume new names…

Use the third letter of your first name to determine your new first name:

A = poopsie
B = lumpy
C = buttercup
D = gidget
E = crusty
F = greasy
G = fluffy
H = cheeseball
I = chim-chim
J = stinky
K = flunky
L = boobie
M = pinky
N = zippy
O = goober
P = doofus
Q = slimy
R = loopy
S = snotty
T = tulefel
U = dorkey
V = squeezit
W = oprah
X = skipper
Y = dinky
Z = zsa-zsa

Use the second letter of your last name to determine the first half of your new last name:
A = apple
B = toilet
C = giggle
D = burger
E = girdle
F = barf
G = lizard
H = waffle
I = cootie
J = monkey
K = potty
L = liver
M = banana
N = rhino
O = bubble
P = hamster
Q = toad
R = gizzard
S = pizza
T = gerbil
U = chicken
V = pickle
W = chuckle
X = tofu
Y = gorilla
Z = stinker

Use the fourth letter of your last name to determine the second half of your new last name:
A = head
B = mouth
C = face
D = nose
E = tush
F = breath
G = pants
H = shorts
I = lips
J = honker
K = b utt
L = brain
M = tushie
N = chunks
O = hiney
P = biscuits
Q = toes
R = buns
S = fanny
T = sniffer
U = sprinkles
V = kisser
W = squirt
X = humperdinck
Y = brains
Z = juice

Thus, for example, George W. Bush’s new name is Goober Chicken shorts. What’s My name, you ask? Oprah Gerbiltush Tushie. Any of you call me that, you’re dead. I’m not kidding. And don’t laugh too hard if you’re related to me — your last name is Gerbiltush too.

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Attic insulation

I didn’t get the insulation in the attic finished the other night, but I did get a big section done, and I covered all the gaps where the old insulation wasn’t covering. I still have a lot of work to do up there, but it’s much better than it was before. Last night, I went home from work, tore out the drywall in the hallway near my back door, took out the terrible, poor insulation, threw it all away, and stapled new, thick, pink insulation up on the wall. Then I cut some boards and built up the threshold under the door so the inch and a half gap under the door is now filled.
The house is *much* warmer. Thank god. I hope my heating bill is less. No I need to edit my to do list and move stuff to the “finished” column.

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Plumbing Woes

So on Monday, I had some emergency plumbing done. Apparently, the pressure from the washer/dryer lines caused a leak elsewhere in the plumbing. So the plumber cut the lines to the bathroom I don’t use, and fixed the leak. I got the washer & dryer delivered (!!!!!) and did most of my laundry yesterday. I also got into the crawlspace and put in a bunch of insulation to help lower the gas bill.
On the agenda tonight: redoing the insulation in the attic to give greater warmth. Picking more insulation up on the way home tonight.

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Against Their Will: North Carolina’s Sterilization Program

Reporters for the “Winston-Salem Journal” have obtained sealed records and are lifting the curtain on a horrifying truth: From 1933-1974, five members of the North Carolina eugenics board met every month and voted to sterilize up to 30 complete strangers in the name of the “greater good.”

Eugenics was the controversial practice of weeding out undesirable genetics by forced sterilization. Most of those sterilized were poor, illiterate, hypersexual, homosexual, promiscuous, or lazy — characteristics deemed “undesirable.” By the program’s end, 7,600 people had been sterilized against their will. About 60% were black, and 99% were female, including Elaine Riddick Jessie, who shares her traumatic story. Some board members admit to battling a crisis of conscience but say it was difficult to vote against the tide of prevailing ideas and the support of North Carolina’s medical and political elite. It’s a story of a program that began with high hopes and good intentions but quickly devolved into something tragic and troubling.

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Stuff I accomplished this weekend

Stuff I accomplished this weekend (so far): organized, packed, labeled and put away all the Xmas decorations. Organized the spare bedrooms. Hung curtains and wall art in master bedroom. Had plumbing and electrical installed for my washer and dryer. Got quotes for other electrical work. Purchased washer and dryer, and arranged for delivery Monday morning. Sorted out music collection. Rearranged office so computers are in the correct places. Went to stewart flea market and bought Nancy Drew books and old photos. Spent lots of time with Kathy. 🙂 So far, great weekend.

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Iraq vs. Korea: Conflicting strategies

Interesting. We’re talking about negotiating a peaceful resolution to our differences with North Korea, a country that currently has concentration camps for political dissidents, but when it comes to Iraq, we’re ready to invade, even though there is no evidence they possess weapons of mass distruction. Right. Tell me again how it’s not about the oil.

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