From somewhere else

“No matter where you live, you will always be from somewhere else.”

I hear myself say this to myself as I walk the halls of the local borough.

“This is what happens when you leave home at the age of seven.”

These Boro Halls of Fair Haven, New Jersey are not decorated so very differently from the Court House walls of my Lancaster County, Virginia childhood. Antiquated images of people, yellowed documents, steamboats.

At this late date, no matter where I go, I will be from somewhere else.

This has its blessedness and its cursedness.

My fights are pretty much the same regardless of geography, wanting to see an end to racism and poverty and to child and animal abuse, to see women’s rights upheld, to see the land and water respected and protected.

Tonight the news upsets me that the town to the north wants to raid the savings account of the library to pay the policemen. (Which is not to say I don’t want policemen to get paid but just that it’s not ok to break into your sister’s room and take her piggybank because you her brother spent all your allowance.)

But the fight that riles me more is that the Catholic Church in Red Bank has just applied for a permit to march to Planned Parenthood to protest abortion, and it does surprise me that they don’t have anything better to do with their resources, (for instance, rooting out and bringing to court the child abusers in their own organization and helping the victims rebuild their lives.) But what was particularly appalling to me was that the mayor of Fair Haven weighed in on the forum and said he for one believes life begins at conception.

And you know what, that is not the issue. Believe what you will and want. But leave women alone to make the medical choices they determine are best for them. I just cannot believe it is 2011 and this is a discussion we are having. Thankfully some ally out there of mine said he would be perfectly willing to uphold the mayor’s right to not have an abortion.

Hallelujah.




(painting by Clarence Holbrook Carter, hanging in the museum at Rutgers)