Coat Hangers and Knitting Needles - Gwen Campbell's Story

Another death, another illegal abortion from my book Coat Hangers and Knitting Needles that tells of abortion before it was legal. Now that it is illegal again in many places the horror is back for many women and their families. For me, the most horrible part is that most of the laws passed against abortion are made by men, some of whom have been known to take their girl friends for abortions. Women should be the ones to write the laws on women's health along with medical experts.

Gwen Campbell Elliott’s Story

Abortions cross all racial lines. Gwen Campbell Elliot was called to the hospital where her mother lay dying. Like Sharon’s mom, Vivian’s last words to her children were to be good, also adding for her to be good in school.

Gwen was told that her mother died in childbirth. Only when she was in college and she saw the death certificate did she learn her mother died of an illegal abortion. Her father, she said, spent a lot of time trying to find out who performed the abortion. His hope for justice went unfulfilled.

Gwen showed the viewers the Jerusalem Baptist Church, a light-yellow brick building. She said the church was the foundation of the family.

In the 1950s, it was still the custom to lay the body out at home. Vivian Campbell was laid out at Gwen’s aunt’s. Gwen knows she was at the cemetery. She remembers thinking she could go to the cemetery and wake her sleeping mom.

Her parents were separated when her mother became pregnant and she’s not sure who the father was.

Not having a mother brought other traumas. She was raised by her grandmother, who was determined her granddaughter would not be sexually active. Gwen’s periods were irregular. To make sure she wasn’t pregnant, the grandmother took her to a doctor, who did an “internal.” He also asked her if she had had sex. Gwen wasn’t sure what sex was, but she’s convinced that if her mother was alive, she would not have to be humiliated and hurt in the doctor’s office. She didn’t communicate with anyone for weeks after that. “I was a scared kid.”

“There have to be more people like me out there. If we don’t speak out the abortion will go the wrong way,” she concludes.

 

Lost and Found "X

 

BOOK LOSS

My masters thesis at the University of Glamorgan was symbolism in John Irving's work. I was surprised when at 83 he published another novel, Queen Esther. I had Pages & Sips, my favorite Geneva book store, order it and enjoyed scones and tea when I picked it up. 

Irving said that the novel carried on from his Cider House Rules, which I reread. I THOUGHT I took Queen Esther back to France with me when I go back there, but was waiting until I finished the biographies of Eleanor Roosevelt before starting it.

All excited, the day I was to begin the new Irving book, I couldn't find it. Had I left it in Geneva? Our flats are not that large so there aren't that many places for a book to go.

I figured when I got back to Geneva, if the library didn't have a copy, I'd order a Kindle.

BOOKMARK

On a cold, but clear day we walked through the Montreux Christmas Marché chalets along Lac Léman. Rick was thrilled to find his poutine, I found a wooden handmade pen for my collection. There was one chalet that looked like English library. They weren't selling books, but golden bookmarks. There were different designs. 

I fell in love with a book design (see photo). Even the 34 CHF price tag didn't persuade me not to buy it. That was 18 months ago and I've used it in the major book I've been reading ever sense. I often read two books at the same time. My other bookmark is a piece of flat wood with a lovely grain.

THE SECOND LOSS

Rick and I have back-to-back physio appointments. I take books to read while he was being worked on.

When I opened my book, the bookmark was gone. 

In our village we can walk to almost everything we need. Rick offered to retrace our steps while Reuben massaged my legs. My husband went to the Retirada musée where we'd taken his kids to see the diaspora of people escaping Franco across the Pyrenees in January 1939. He walked back to our house. He told me he looked through our flat. Giving up, he headed for his appointment.

2X FOUND 

Rick had found Queen Esther behind other books. Walking back through Place Gambetta and by the grocery store he, by chance, glanced down and there was the book mark.

The book and its bookmark were reunited and I was very happy.

Free Write - The Rock

This week's Free Write was delayed between guests and life. Next week we should be on track.

Julia's Free Write

“The Rocks in my Life”

Up yet another mountain, another field, another path; looking, always looking for signs that specialists had told him about; that formation, that type of apparently innocent-seeming rock, which, when split would reveal crystals. Over the years there had been some breathtaking moments.

Then there were the purposeless hikes, often with eyes glued to the ground, unconsciously looking for that perfect round, that whiter than white stone.

It wasn’t until he returned home from being abroad that he realized where he had gotten his fascination: his mother lifted his backpack – heavy – and laughed when she realized what he had drug across the oceans.

Then he looked around the house…everywhere small piles. But the best rock of all was the year he had no present for his father for Christmas.

He went down to the lake below their house – brrr – it was December 24^th – dove and found the perfect smooth rock.

We won’t mention the other rocks in my life – too numerous to count.

D-L Free Write

Think girl!

Solid as a rock

Rock solid

Rock and roll.

Don't rock the boat

Get your rocks off

Rocky mountain (s) (high)

None fit the prompt. 

Could the white lines on the prompt be pain? Maybe some mineral. What is the type of stone?

Two minutes gone. Eight to go.

Rocks can be made into cairns. I learned about those in Iceland. My husband has built a small cairn on our patio. 

Four minutes to go.

What about skipping stones into a pond, tiny rocks. Three people by the water, each holding a flat stone. 

Make it a story. With boys.

Tom throws his. And it skips. He's not that well co-ordinated like his big brother Jason who skips his skips twice.

Jenny steps up. "Watch out boys for the champion. She winds up her arm theatrically and lets it rip. Four skips.¨

"How did she do that?" Tom asks. Jason just shrugs.

Thank goodness. Free Write time is up. 

Rick's Free Write

The rocks in my life. Literal rocks or metaphorical?

I have a cairn that I built on the outdoor patio from interesting rocks I have collected in various places, such as the beach. And re-built and re-built when moving it around to powerwash the patio floor.

There are rocks in the large flower pots along the front of the apartment. The flowers and plants are intended for privacy. The rocks are intended to prevent the street cats from shitting in the pots.

My dad used to use a phrase, “He’s got rocks in his head,” to indicate someone he thought was particularly slow-witted.

But in a sense we all have “rocks in our heads” – mental challenges that we carry around and weigh us down as we trudge through the day. Health issues, financial, family, societal…

I suppose a cairn is an attempt to create an order from the rocks in our life. Large stones on the bottom, perilously supporting the medium and small stones above. Brightly coloured or shiny rocks that highlight pleasant memories. Sometimes re-arranging the order of the rocks for better balance. Adding a new rock and trying to find a place for it.

We took Sherlock to the beach the other day – his favourite place to run. I thought about it but didn’t pick up any new rocks for the cairn… or my head.

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/ 

Leave me Alone

I need to sign an agreement with my rental agency with whom I've had a wonderful relationship for a couple of decades. It is an electronic document. It came through no problem.

We read it.

We signed on screen as told. 

Nothing. 

Several tries and we were told we would get a code within three hours. We are about to leave the house for the next eight hours and we will have the code on our phone but not have the screen to sign.

It takes two seconds to sign a paper copy. We've wasted part of the morning on NOT SIGNING. We still have to deal with it tomorrow.

I went to send a photo to my Facebook Messenger, something I do sometimes daily, sometimes many times a day.

The method has changed and I need to figure out the additional steps.

I get regular messages that my laptop wants to update to this or that, install this or that I don't want.

I'll be happily writing and pop ups dirty up my screen for products I don't want and even if I did, I would not buy because my writing or whatever I was working on was interrupted.

I have a dream, not as profound as MLK, but that I turn on my computer, bring up whatever I want to work on and work without any interruptions EXCEPT by cups of tea or potty breaks that I decide.

Coat Hangers and Knitting Needs -- Sharon Magee

In writing Coat Hangers and Knitting Needles about abortion before Roe v. Wade, I came across many stories about women who died and about the families they left. Sharon Magee's story was part of the film Motherless. 

*****

        The last time Sharon Magee saw her mother, Mary, she thought she might have been going out on a date. Sharon is the youngest of the four speakers in the film, an attractive, articulate woman with children of her own. Her mother died in 1960.

She remembers her mother’s last words to her: “And you be good.” Mary Magee always gave Sharon a hug and a kiss when she left.

Sharon was four when her mother died. Photos shows her in a puff-sleeved dress playing with her toys. Despite her young age, she remembers them going shopping and eating pizza together: fleeting, but good memories. Memories of being cared for and loved.

When she was older a friend told her that her mother was murdered. Sharon said she felt ashamed.

Sharon reads from the news clipping describing Mary’s death. “A young woman, who apparently died in an abortion attempt, was identified by her parents at the City Morgue shortly before dawn today.” Sharon’s voice breaks as the article describes how the woman was left by two men who said they needed help than sped away.

A 56-year-old woman was charged with the abortion, the third attempt on Mary, who worked as a secretary for a cement company. What killed her was an injection of pine oil.

“It is too much to know because I often wonder did she think of me before she died? Did she think of me before she did this?” Sharon asked. She compares it to a child being left alone in a department store, although people would come up to help, they wouldn’t be the right person—the mother.

Sharon said that one of her sons was very attached to her. It was hard for her to watch how much he wanted her like she had wanted her own mother.

She hopes her mother will not be seen as a “pig” and added. “This stuff happens…It shouldn’t happen, but it did."

Sexual Harassment and Hope

 

Sexual Harassment and Hope

1972

On my first professional corporate job, my boss was wonderful, a mentor in the full sense of the word. In fact, for decades when I was solving a problem, I would think, "What would Walter do?"

Not everyone was so lucky. The PR assistant had her ideas stolen by her boss, but worse was the accounting department. The women complained that their breasts should not be part of the job descriptions, yet they were. 

Thanks to Betty Frieden and The Feminine Mystique women were given something other than secretarial roles. Even with good degrees they would start as secretaries. However if the boss moved on they would be promoted to his responsibilities, given his title with the word ACTING in front of it and paid about half his salary which still was a raise. Often they would use it as a stepping stone to a full title and an almost full salary elsewhere.

The accounting manager hired a new accountant. She had an MBA but was still in a junior role. We all heard shouting from the accounting office followed by the new employee bursting out the door screaming, "Don't touch my breast!!!!!!!!!!" She ran to the HR office.

We expected her to be fired.

We were wrong.

He was.

HR called some former female employees who verified why they left.

Hi-fiving hadn't been invented -- but the women mentally hi-fived. We also noticed after that the few men in the company that we had to watch out for were on their best behavior. 

It was a start.

Cruelty, immorality, lies, horrible people

 

Sometimes I want to hide under my bed when I watch the news. I suppose I could shut it off, but I can't resist peeking at the TV from under the bedspread to check out what is going on in various countries: U.S., Swiss, French, German, English, Irish, Scottish, Swedish news 

It is depressing with the U.S. being the worst. 

I hate watching my birth country disintegrate. My birth country is a rogue nation. An evil nation. A nation of killers including the soldiers who kill in illegal attacks. How can they live with themselves?

• Genocide by the Israeli government is undeniable no matter how they lie about it. Hard to believe that terrorists are the only place they strike. No make that impossible to believe.
• People, allegedly drug dealers, are shot and killed in tiny boats without proof. Do the pilots realize they are killing people? Does it bother them?
• Two airmen, whose names are never mentioned, were allegedly rescued in Iran. Where did they disappeared to? Hard to believe this is real.
• Also hard to believe U.S. leaders have total lack of understanding about Iran over the decades and the damage the U.S did to them. Not that I think Iran is a great country - I don't - but the U.S. has hurt them and they have fought back. 
• Threats are made by the U.S. to attack other countries, illegally at the very best, doesn't stop them from threatening countries like Canada, Greenland, Cuba and more. They have no right to attack another country. NO RIGHT.
• Even as an atheist, I can't believe that the Secretary of Defense, attacked the Pope who argues for peace and morality. That's more what the U.S. is doing.
• Reading that Orban and his reign were the guidelines for Project 2025 which is well on the way to implementing and destroying the U.S.  Hopefully the American people will fight back as the Hungarian people did. 
• Seeing the media curtailed is frightening. Orban's play book again.
• An 86 year old French women joined her American partner. When he died, ICE threw her in detention before she could get her green card. This is not the action of a civilized country.
• Texas abortion deaths up 56% after abortion ban in 2021.
• Feds strip kid migrant housing in Florida.

And on and on.

That was today. What horrendous facts will tomorrow bring? How will leaders cave to cruelty, immorality and lies. What kind of horrible people run the U.S.?

Maybe I'll stay under the bed.

More and more hiding under my bed seems

April Christmas Tree

Four months since Christmas 2025. Eight months until Christmas 2026.

In 2024 we bought a living tree with the hope of using it every year. We decorated it on the day of the winter solstice. During the 2024 canicule, it shrivelled and died from the heat.

One more try: last Christmas we bought the tree in the photo above from Jardinland. We always get a table tree out of fear that Sherlock will think of it as an early present, an indoor toilet.

Unlike 2024, the 2025 tree graced its table December 21st - January 6th and is now outside our front door. It is bravely putting forth new branches reinforcing the symbolism of the birth of spring.

As an agnostic, Christmas for me is about the turning of the earth toward spring. It is why I want a living tree or at least a branch. 

Will this tree survive the summer heat?  I hope so.