Coat Hangers-The Making of Leona's Sister

 

The Making of Leona’s Sister Gerri

In talking about what threatens legalized abortion today, Jane Gillooly went beyond the pro-life movement into the cost of abortion and health care. Like many women who know or remember about life before Roe v. Wade, she is surprised the same fight continues 44 years later

 

 Each time I watched the DVD, Leona’s Sister Gerri, I cried at the waste.

Gerri wasn’t the only one suffering waste caused by not having safe abortion services available. Her daughters, brothers, sisters, parents and friend were also deprived of Gerri’s warmth and love.

I wondered not just about the woman who had the abortion but about the woman, Jane Gillooly, who made a film about this particular abortion. What motivated her to tell the story of this unnecessary death?

As a journalist, I know it is possible to slant any story by selecting the facts to be printed. The same with documentaries. An ethical journalist, an ethical documentary maker, will be sure to tell the in-depth story without inserting their own prejudice.

Another filmmaker might have taken the point of view that Gerri was wrong to marry a man she barely knew, wrong to stay with him, wrong to have an affair.

Very few people go through life without making bad choices. Gillooly does not gloss over or overly dramatize Gerri’s bad choices. She made mistakes—a fact. She needed to correct her mistakes.

Gerri believed her pregnancy carried a greater risk of death from her abusive husband, from whom she was separated, than death by abortion.

Death is a high price for a mistake. She would not be the first or last woman to seek happiness and believe the promises of a lover for a better life, only to have it evaporate.

On one viewing, I tried watching the film, not only from the perspective of the information, but from how the story was told.

Finding the Filmmaker

Happy endings cannot be created when an early and unnecessary death is the story.  wondered aboutthefilmmakerJane

•      What made her select this as a subject?
•      How did she make some of the editing decisions?
•      What were her personal feelings about abortion?

Since the film had been made in 1995, I wasn’t sure I could locate her. Thanks to social media, it was easier than I imagined.

Her website contained more information, including other films she has made and international recognition of her work in Canada, Mexico and Russia as well as playing in prestigious places such as the Lincoln Center, the Sundance Film Festival and on Public Broadcasting System (PBS) television. She teaches at the Museum of Fine Arts School, Tufts University, Boston/Medford, Massachusetts.

I emailed Gillooly. She responded that she would be happy to do an interview. Between our travel schedules it took a couple of weeks to arrange.

She was an easy interviewee.

I was amazed to learn that Leona’s Sister Gerri was her first film because it appeared to be so professional. Prior to filming she’d been an artist working with images and text.

She had seen the photo of Gerri’s corpse in the motel room, she said, in Our Bodies Ourselves, a feminist classic book about women’s health and sexuality researched and written by a non-profit group in Boston. Used by women all over the world, the book is translated into 29 languages and has sold more than four million copies. It is considered one of the best texts on feminine health care for the non-medical world. The latest edition was issued in 2011. www.ourbodiesourselves.org but their website contains everything the book does and more.

She used the word “horrific” to describe the photo. I don’t see how anyone can look at the photo and not get the same reaction. As awful as the photo was, the details of the person who died were unknown.

She was “stunned” to learn that the mother of her friend, Toni Elka, was Gerri’s sister,

Leona.

Gillooly wanted Gerri’s story told. She approached Leona, but the woman wasn’t ready to talk 

talk publicly. Rather than pressure her, Gillooly said if she changed her mind, please call her. A couple of years later she received the call she was sure would never come.

Jane had never made a film, but she also knew you don’t delay when an opportunity comes up. Although she didn’t have a camera, she bought one, which cost around $2,000, a lot of money for her.

Later she would get a National Endowments for the Art (NEA) grant and financial help from PBS to help defray editing costs.

“Gerri didn’t die of an abortion. I mean technically she did, but she died because she was pregnant by a married man, she was afraid of her estranged husband, she was ashamed and couldn’t speak to anyone about it. She wasn’t intending on having an abortion; it was illegal, birth control was still illegal, and the moral code that everyone was living under forced her to silence,” Gillooly said.

It was not enough to just have Leona speaking. One of Gerri’s brothers, John Twedy, agreed to talk on camera. One of the police detectives, now a lawyer, was willing, another was not, but the detective willing to talk gave the needed depth.

The chambermaid was willing to tell how she found Gerri’s body, but didn’t want her name used, although she was happy to be visible on camera. Jane agreed to not identify her.

The film has been distributed in classrooms and libraries. It was premiered on PBS 1 June 1995. It is available through the Internet (http://abortionfilms.org/en/show/3468/leonas-schwester-gerri/).

In talking about what threatens legalized abortion today, Gillooly went beyond the pro-life movement into the cost of abortion and health care. Like many women who know or remember about life before Roe v. Wade, she is surprised the same fight continues 44 years later.

“Every single woman in the film with one exception—everyone had an abortion, and everyone wanted to tell me about it,” Gillooly said. That included Gerri’s daughter, Judy, who was 15 when she had an abortion. Judy is pro-life and feels she may have to answer for her own abortion, but she does not want to make the decision whether to abort or not for anyone else.

Gillooly also denies that abortion is only a woman’s issue. She says it is a man’s issue too.

And in the film, it is obvious the effect the film has had on all of Gerri’s family and friends.

She has made other films since Leona’s Sister Gerri, all of which she thinks show the human condition, she hopes with a sense of authenticity. Her other work includes:

        Audience of Love and Shame (2015) 70 mins. An unattended camera observes an audience watching her film, Suitcase of Love and Shame.

        Suitcase of Love and Shame (2013) 70 min. This 1960s Midwestern love story is reconstructed from 60 hours of audiotape discovered in a suitcase purchased on eBay.

        Today the Hawk Takes One Chick (2008) 72 mins. In the Lubombo region of Swaziland, three grandmothers become instrumental in defining a new world order dictated by HIV/AIDS.

        Splendor (2005) 2 mins. It illuminates the richness of friendship, the importance of self-determination, and the capacity for growth, even as dementia and death approach.

        Dragonfiles: The Baby Cries (2000) 10 mins. Verging in tone from the coy to the sinister.

        Theme: Murder (1998) 56 mins. In 1968, Boston art dealer Hyman Swetzoff was beaten and left to die in his Bay Village home. The murder remains unsolved.

 

In an interview, Gilooly said, “I can feel the similarity in my films more than I can describe it. I do try to balance a commitment to emotional authenticity against a censorial style of editing driven by evocative images, atmospheres, and sounds. The experience I strive for while making films has sometimes been described as a musical approach to editing—articulating a composition between the poignantly lyrical and the brutally direct. I have not made many films and when I do it is because I feel a real compassion for and deep understanding of the complexities of the human emotion that I try to translate (https://saint-lucy.com/conversations/jane-gillooly/).

As for Leona’s Sister Gerri, she said, “I wasn’t making a film about abortion, I was making a film about shame.

Erasing History

 

These are among the plaques to be removed from the Bunker Hill Monument as part of President Trump's desire to make sure nothing negative appears about the United States.  The removal was triggered by a woman who complained that a statement about women's suffrage was woke. 

The quotes refer to slavery, war, women's suffrage, etc.

Not knowing the truth about the past is dangerous for a democracy. A recent example is the alleged reason for the Iran War. Trump wants Iran to agree to comply to things that they already agreed to and were in a treaty that he annulled. Statements that Iranians hate Americans never include the reasons why. 

A friend who moved to Mexico had a son who studied the Spanish-American War in the US and Mexico. He came home to tell his mother, "Mom, they were two different wars."

In Texas where my visitor husband was heard calling January 6th an insurrection belligerently challenged him calling it a demonstration. I must have watched the insurrection on news stations from Switzerland, France, England and Germany news. That was no demonstration. Nor was it a tour as some have claimed.

At University, a Brit taught the causes of the American Revolution from England's perspective. Like my friend's son said, it was a different revolution.

Massachusetts leaders did not react well to the removal. Governor Maura Healey said, "It is a disgrace that President Trump is attempting to erase voices and perspectives from one of our nation's most important historic sites. . . That's not preserving history. That's censoring it. President Trump doesn't get to decide which parts of our history are worth remembering."

I find many Americans are not aware of some of the most important events in their history. Maybe they don't even know about Bunker Hill. Probably most of them will not go to Bunker Hill in Boston, but if they do, thanks to President Trump they will be denied a part of their history. That's just plain wrong.

Try an experiment. Ask your friends, colleagues about Bunker Hill. Pick some other things from America's past like the Jay Treaty. What was a Democrat-Republican Party and who founded it. Or pick any other brick in the wall of American history and see if they know.

Erasing history verbally doesn't make it go away. The events still happened. 

 

 

Daisy and Mabel

 

No this isn't a Thelma and Louise type story.

Daisy Hodges and Mabel Fairclough were two women who lived on Grove Street in Reading, Massachusetts from the 1920s until the 1960s in their same homes. They married, bought a house and made it a home until they died. A house was a home, not an investment.

I suspect I'm the only person on the planet who remembers them. Very few people who ever lived on the planet are remembered once their families and friends die and are also are forgotten.

Both women were typical of their time and social class: Republicans, Daughters of the American Revolution, professional housewives, "good" Christians, prohibitionists, proper and most importantly wives and mothers. 

Daisy's house was on a slope. I would never have called her Daisy. All my grandmother's friends were called Mrs. (Fill in the blank) . If I ever used their first name it was preceded by "aunt" even without a drop of DNA between us. No one knew about DNA then.

Daisy Hodges was fat at a time when very few people were: chubby yes, well padded yes - but not fat. She had huge breasts. Is my memory clouded by time, but was she able to stick pins in her left breast? As a little girl I tried to avoid being too near her, for she always seemed to be one day too late for a bath.  

Ben Hodges, Daisy's husband, was a thin man who loved photography. He came to my house to take my picture. He sat me on our piano bench covered with an itchy multi-colored throw. He put my legs on the bench so it wasn't a full-on photo, rare for the day. I was four. I still have the photo.

The Faircloughs lived on top of a pine-tree covered hill where Grove Street crossed with Forest Street.

They had one daughter whose framed wedding picture was proudly displayed in the living room. The same living room had window sills covered with wooden planks. Nails stuck out to prevent the cat from jumping up. Outside sills had planks with nails too to prevent birds from landing.

Mabel was in a terrible car accident and fought back to recover when no one thought she would. Many years later she died in another car accident.

My grandmother did not spend a lot of time with them although, they belonged to the same groups. When they met at meetings, they would wear hats and gloves. 

My grandmother was happy to be at home most of the time. Another professional housewife she had much to do keeping her home in top order and her family well fed. In her free time there were books to read and my brother and I to love and play with. 

Sometimes Mabel would visit as a solo drop in. I don't remember Daisy in our house at all. My memories are of being at her house, but I can't think why.

When I think back to these women from my childhood, it is almost like watching a period film or TV show, an Agatha Christie set in Massachusetts rather than the UK and without a murder. 

A sociologist would notice the details of their lives, how they were like other middle class women of their time.They make up the history of the period but without fame. 

 

 

Dar's Recipe Box

I called my Grandmother Dar and soon her whole world followed even friends from her school days.

She was a good, old-fashioned cook with a treasure trove of recipes gleaned from friends, family, publications and her own imagination.

Dar died in her late 80s, 56 years ago. I have her recipe box chock full of culinary wisdom, most of it in her own handwriting. I doubt that she ever dreamed it would be handed down through the decades and would travel the world.

I was looking through it the other day to figure out what to take to a Canadian supper. (Swiss for pot luck) It will be part of a house concert (violin and piano). The hostess assigned types of food by alphabet group. I could go with A for Adams or N for Nelson. I'll do the N category, a main dish.

Maybe I'll make Dar's Scalloped Corn. I should do a dry run to make sure I've got it right. 

 Scalloped Corn

• 1 pound of creamed canned corn.
• 1 box Uneda* crackers.
• 1/4 pound butter.
• Real pepper. 
• Put rolled crackers not too fine in a bowl. Add enough milk until like a cream roll and add 1/2 butter and mix.
• Put butter on bottom of casserole.
• Add mixture and dot with pieces of butter.  
• Let stand till all milk absorbed.
• Bake one hour at 350°F (190°C).   
• Center will rise.  
• To check if done put knife in middle and it should come out clean. 
• Don't forget the pepper. 

                                            

* Not made since 2009. Will try Ritz as a substitute which I can get here or maybe another. I remember what Uneeda biscuits taste like.

Lucille's Oatmeal Bread - one loaf

• 1 cup reg. Quaker Oats
• 1 teaspoon shortening
• 1/2 cup molasses
• 1 teaspoon salt
• One yeast cake.

• Scald oatmeal with two cups boiling water.
• Add shortening, salt and yeast cake dissolved in luke warm water and mix well.
• Add four cups of flour more or less bit by bit until dough is stiff.

• Knead on floured cloth making a smooth ball.
• But in well-greased bowl in a warm place until twice the size.
• Punch down. 
• Fill a loaf pan 3/4 full and let rise again.
• Bake in pre-heated 375° (190°C) oven. 
• Make rolls of left-over dough.

Dar didn't say how long to let the bread bake. I checked several bread recipes to get an idea. After half hour and regularly thereafter I opened the oven and knocked on the center. It will sound right, a bit hollow. Like Dar, I became a gut cook.

Because she was writing the cards for herself the directions would not pass the muster of a cookbook editor. For me there's joy in touching what she touched, trying to duplicate childhood favorites.

My mother Dorothy Sargent Boudreau had a food column in The Lawrence Eagle Tribune called Stove Stories. https://stovestories.blogspot.com/  A couple of those columns are in the recipe box. Well after my mother's death, I came across other columns and put them in a blog. Blogs did not exist when she was alive, but if they did I'm sure she would have written one. 

Maybe there was a cave family in prehistoric times, sitting around the fire talking about the time grandmother burned the mammoth meat.

These recipes reinforce my belief that food comes with a human history and a personal history, something reinforced when my I touch Dar's handwriting. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Floating Petals

 

Two champagne glasses. A petal in each.  

It was the 11th anniversary celebration of our official marriage. Since Bartavelle is our favorite all time, all places restaurant, a meal there has meaning besides incredible food.

I say our official marriage for a reason. In Switzerland and many other countries only the ceremony performed by a city official is valid. A couple can marry 1000 times in a church, but it has no legal standing. Rick and I had exchanged vows 13 years before in a commitment ceremony attended by 40 friends from seven countries. It counted the most for us.

Bartavelle had served a meal for our out-of-country guests the night before the commitment ceremony. One friend mentions it whenever we eat together. "It's good, but it isn't Bartavelle."

The owners of the restaurant are artists. Thibault, the award-winning chef, is an artist in food. His wife Stephanie is an artist not just in all-things restaurant, but in painting as well. We have several of her works in both France and Switzerland. One of our patio walls, features a mural.

Our celebration meal was no exception to the fantastic food. Except there was an exception to the exception.

As Rick and I chatted, I looked at the champagne glasses, the petals made their way to the top and down and up and down, swimming gracefully among the bubbles. 

Stephanie may not have known it, but the petals in champagne was a symbol of our marriage. Even with ups and downs our relationship has been like a fine champagne. 

 

 

Free Write: The Empty Garage (almost)

Julia's Free Write

Empty!

Her head was empty.

It had been a bit of a struggle the past few weeks: her little boy ending up in emergency; followed by her husband’s mild stroke, never mind her best friend’s heart-breaking diagnosis.

Then there was the world situation.

Yes, there had been good times – and would be again. She’d weather the medical crises, she’d ignore the world for a while.

What she could no longer ignore was the empty refrigerator, the ever-diminishing supplies in both freezer and cupboards.

A shopping trip was no longer something to be put off so she started the list (she was good on making lists, then forgetting them and so ending up with items lacking every time), ready the bags.

During the short drive she emptied her head, enjoyed the beautiful fall day and arrived five minutes later at her favorite mini department store.

Miracle of miracles, the car park was almost empty!

D-L's Free Write

Marilyn clutched her note and text book to her chest as she entered the parking garage. 

Only one car. 

Hers.

It was after 10 p.m. 

She was exhausted. Her alarm had gone of at 5:30. She'd worked all day, then gone to her statistics class. God, she hated statistics. 

Afterwards she went to the university library to research her psych class paper.

She thought of all the Midsomer Murder shows where women were killed in empty places like this garage.

Three rats ran under her car. Yuck!

She forced herself to unlock her car door. Although not religious, she prayed the rats would stay away from her. 

Before she could start her car, another car rushed into the garage, slammed on its brakes, opened its door and shoved a body, a bloodied body out and sped off.

She didn't move until he was gone. She grabbed her phone and dialed 911. 

Rick's Free Write 

 "I’ve staked out the dad’s car but I think I may have been made,” Jacob said, reporting in on the hour. “No one came back to the car, and the magasin has been closed for more than 30 minutes, and there are no other vehicles in the garage, not even an employee scooter.”

“Hang there awhile longer, Jacob,” his handler said. “They may be monitoring the garage exit to see if you leave.”

“I’m concerned about the cameras in the garage. I’m going to have to ditch this car soon.”

“You shouldn’t have been so obvious. You should have left when the last car took off. Didn’t I teach you anything?”

They had been watching the parents’ house in the Geneva suburbs for a month. They were certain Garrett and Melanie were hiding out in the region and would try to make contact.

They had lost their trail in Argelés after the fire. But they had picked them up from facial recognition in Grenoble. So they were confident Switzerland was their destination.

“H-h-hold on,” stuttered Jacob,” I see a shadow moving.”

Rick Adams is an aviation journalist and publisher of www.aviationvoices.com, a weekly newsletter reporting the airline industry  top stories . He is the author of The Robot in the Simulator. AI in Aviation Training.  

Visit D-L.'s website  https://dlnelsonwriter.com, She is the author of 15 fiction and three non fiction books. Her 300 Unsung Women, bios of women who battled gender limitations, can be purchased  at https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/300-unsung-women-d-l-nelson/1147305797?ean=9798990385504 

Visit Julia's blog. She has written and taken photos and loves syncing up with friends.  Her blog can be found: https://viewsfromeverywhere.blogspot.com/