Margaret was a Culture Kitchen blogger for awhile and, while there, was one of our best bloggers. She moved on long ago, and I always missed her presence at CK. But she went on to what she considered bigger and better things. In her 80's she discovered her public voice and I am proud I was one of the people who encouraged and helped her find that voice.

This comes late because I mainly interacted with Margaret Bassett by email. So if I didn't hear from her, I didn't think much about it. But I knew she was over 80. She was a subscriber to my Progressive Democrat Newsletter from the beginning soon after the 2004 election. She had seen me as something of a hope for the future in messaging, something I think she overrated me on, but I was flattered and tried to live up to.

Today I sent out a message to my subscribers that my writing of the Progressive Democrat Newsletter had clearly been on hold for over a month and I wasn't sure if/when it would come back.

One email bounced. It was the first time Margaret's email bounced in all the time she read my stuff. So it caught my attention immediately. It sent a shiver down my spine. So I did a quick google search and discovered what I feared...Margaret had died, back in August, at the age of 89. I cried.  read more »

The WW II dockside kiss:

Now, for the first time ever in America, the dock side kiss includes gay and lesbian troops:

It is such a small thing, and yet for history it is huge. Back in ancient times the Greeks recognized the value of gay soldiers in the super elite Theban "Sacred Band" which was composed of homosexual couples and was one of the most effective fighting forces of the time.

So America is just now catching up to ancient Greece on this issue.

There is an image of Jews going tamely to slaughter in the Holocaust. And it is true, for various reasons, this did happen all too often. But some Jews stood up and fought, even at times defeating the Nazis at least for a time. Throughout the Nazi era, there were always Jews who stood up and fought, and we should not forget those fights.

Sobibor was one of the Nazi death camps. Not just a run of the mill, as it were, concentration camp. But a full out Death Camp whose sole purpose was the death of Jews.

Jews so thoroughly trashed the place that the Nazis did all they could to eliminate every memory of the place. I want to REMEMBER Sobibor, just as much as the Nazis want us all to forget it. In honor of the Jews who rebelled at Sobibor, here is a song written by someone in the Vilna Ghetto, inspired by the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, honoring those who stood up and fought. It is sung in this case by Paul Robeson, who does it full justice:

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This is adapted from something I wrote some years ago when I actually worked in the building where the Triangle Shirtwaist fire took place. But it is a part of American history, labor history, and Jewish-American history that Teabaggers want us to forget. And we must not EVER forget because the women who lost their life that day died so that today we have fire regulations and unions. The Teabaggers are desecrating the memories of those women who died 100 years ago.

On March 25th 1911, 146 people died in the very building I used to work in before our lab moved to the NYU school of medicine. The result of their deaths was the rapid growth of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union and the real beginning of the fight against sweatshops. These are the very advances that right wing extremists in the Republican party are trying to eliminate, forgetting those 146 deaths. It also was the beginning of fire regulations in American cities.

The story of the fire and the missed opportunities to prevent it are chilling. But what is more chilling is the fact that America has forgotten why we need unions. Even some unions have forgotten what unions are all about, but I want everyone who doubts the need for unions to remember the events of March 25, 1911.

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February 12th is Abraham Lincoln's birthday. Time to revisit my annual article on Lincoln, slavery and the Civil War.

Awhile back I was reading some old reference books I have and some things about the Civil War struck me. First off, one thing is clear: Abraham Lincoln, though a great man in his own right, would have been a minor figure in history and a minor, probably one-term, President had it not been for the Civil War. By seceding, the Southern States catapulted Lincoln into history. Lincoln won below 40% of the popular vote. Lincoln's Republican Party won a majority in neither House of Congress. According to The Presidents, edited by Henry Graff, Stephen Douglas felt that had the Southern States not seceded, Lincoln would have been powerless:

...an object of pity and commiseration rather than of fear and apprehension by a brave and chivalrous people.

But that is not what happened. The South DID secede and this gave Lincoln the opportunity to be a great figure in history. And Lincoln certainly rose to the occasion.

The claim that secession had nothing to do with slavery is bunk, mere revisionism by the losing side that didn't want to be tarred forever for defending slavery. Southern secession was EXPLICITLY (though not necessarily exclusively) about slavery. The North did not fight primarily over the issue of slavery, but over preservation of the Union. But for the South, preservation, and even expansion, of slavery was the prime issue for at least 2 decades before the Civil War, and was the main reason explicitly stated for secession. In fact, the issue of slavery almost led to secession more than once before South Carolina finally made good on the constant Southern threat. Slavery was the issue that dominated American politics. Perhaps the South and individual Southerners had reasons other than JUST slavery for fighting. But the single issue that led to secession was slavery. Period. Any other claims are false.  read more »