"No man is greater than his mother..."

The Library of Congress has posted up a collection of Women's Suffrage-related sheet music (both pro and anti, it should be noted) just in time for enterprising USian musos who need a few chunes for the 19th Amendment ratification centennial.

Febb Burn writes a letter to her Senator. Image via teachtnhistory.org

Inez Milholland 1886 - 1916

Lawyers on Horseback

It's the centenary of the death of Inez Milholland, who died on this day in 1916, age 30. She packed a lot into a very short amount of time.

We thought we might have an audience still celebrating a victory. We had some vague plan for going up to Lewis after and pouring a libation of decent Scotch on the stone up there -- I imagine this would have been her drink, but that's an only semi-educated guess. Anyway I don't think anybody here got stickers to plaster a headstone with the way they did in Rochester.

Best laid schemes of mice and men gang aft into the deepest of the weeds.

But if there was anything we made sure to put in the narrative, it was the long haul nature of the task. No doubt these women never imagined, in a world claiming to be ruled by reason, that it would take more years than they had to give. No doubt every minor victory seemed like it would put the last hill in sight. But when it turned out otherwise, they went on.

That seems to have been the message of the show, as people came up to us after, not a draining of the cup in victory at the finish, but a little bit to brace us on the road ahead.

opening night verdict

Win.

adventures in intertextuality, or "Ti guarda dal A. Mitchell Palmer..."

The Story of the Woman's Party proofing vignette, wherein Sara Bard Field goes all Marquis of Posa on Woodrow Wilson:

"...as we look over the long backward trail through which we have sought our political liberty, we are asking, how long, how long, must this struggle go on?

Mr. President, to the nation more than to women themselves is this waste of maternal force significant. In industry, such a waste of money and strength would not be permitted. The modern trend is all towards efficiency. Why is such waste permitted in the making of a nation?

Sometimes I think it must be very hard to be a President, in respect to his contacts with people, as well as in the grave business he must perform. The exclusiveness necessary to a great dignitary holds him away from the democracy of communion necessary to full understanding of what the people are really thinking and desiring...."



footnote: A. Mitchell Palmer

project update for any who will

Well, that's one dress rehearsal survived. Invited audience members stayed through the whole thing, yay. More to the point, nobody got fidgety during Act II: Attack of the Suffrage Referenda! And it held together pretty well despite a missing cast member and blocking in its infancy. So...win.

What's interesting, though, is how much the spoken parts fade against the songs. Or maybe that's just  a corollary of that old college lit-class law that says you hand the damn paper in already when you can't remember a shred of what you wrote.

Or maybe it's just the strength of the songs, which is, of course, how it should be. Anyway, several people said the narrative worked, so we run with that.

Additions and subtractions:

One inquiry from the Labor History quarter about working Elizabeth Gurley Flynn into the narrative for the Lawrence Strike / Bread & Roses segment.
(Yes we absolutely should but can we?)

The Lawrence into Titanic bit remains problematic post-editing -- we are now backing into Titanic through a very narrow crawlspace of anti-suffrage reference, which used to be a broad boulevard of High Edwardian anti-suffrage bloviation. (C'mon! Cantankerous viragos! Fun!) But there has been some give on the idea of rewriting that part completely, so at least that's on the table for down the line.

The other side of the writing table also suggested that the Ida B Wells segment has taken too much of a hit in the editing process, and we should reinstate a key line from the July draft. Huzzah!

It strikes me also how visual this show ought to be (but won't be for the foreseeable future), because of how visual the movement gets after 1900. Advertising conquers all.

feet, meet fire

Some of you know and others may have gathered that I'm helping out with a music/theater piece on the Women's Suffrage movement in America. Word comes down the wire we are in at Seneca Falls next July. I feel like we should be pouring libations on somebody's tomb somewhere.

Photo: Diane LM @ findagrave.com

Columbia sez: This script isn't going to write itself, you know. Rise up, you slackers, and finish Act 2!

Woodrow Wilson goes for a constitutional, 1917

Suffrage Festival of Fonts

road trip to DC, 1913

Photo: Library of Congress

small town parades

Right now I'm just nomming on the fact that Mrs Oliver Hazard Perry Belmont, Gilded Age One Percenter of Legend and founder of the Metropolitan Opera, helped organize and probably bankrolled a pro-suffrage parade in Manhattan that included a contingent of pro-suffrage men led by Max Eastman, publisher of Ten Days That Shook the World.

Weekend Agenda

dangerous to know

A 1912 anti-suffragette postcard that manages to make them look cool as f**k :-D pic.twitter.com/dTFvhhnGXO

— Dave Pattern (@daveyp) June 6, 2016