Jump to content
IGNORED

RIP Ruth Bader Ginsburg


Audrey2

Recommended Posts

1 hour ago, nausicaa said:

Brandeis didn't lie in state? Interesting. TIL

It seems to be an incredibly special honour, no other Supreme Court Justice  have lain in state before her.

ETA I stand corrected, William Howard Taft did, but he had been also President.

Edited by laPapessaGiovanna
  • Upvote 8
  • Thank You 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

My first thought when I heard she was lying in state was "I'm glad her family was OK with that, because she deserves the honor."

For most Jewish families, the tradition is burial very soon after death, then a 3-7 day period of mourning. I don't know if anyone in her family is ritually observant.

Ginsburg herself, as far as I know, grew up in an Orthodox tradition, but chafed at the restrictions placed on women in prayer, and was an essentially secular Jew, although, I think she was loosely affiliated with this synagogue  and had personal ties to the rabbi.

As this article points out, the mix of religious and national traditions was a reminder of how she lived her life.

  • Thank You 8
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I hope it helps put Biden in the WH and gives the Dems the senate.

image.png.f90eefaea728bce25ab8da2ccef20737.png

 

  • Upvote 4
  • Love 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I hope it helps put Biden in the WH and gives the Dems the senate.

Think it's working  -- Lindsey Graham has been on Fox several times this week, whining about all the money sent to Mr. Harrison.

 

  • Upvote 10
Link to comment
Share on other sites

He acts like they hate his guts for some mysterious, unknown reason.  :roll:

Lyndsey, I don't hate your guts - you are not worth the energy needed for hating you personally.

I despise your actions, doing (and claiming to believe) anything that you think is expedient to you at the moment. I'm disgusted by your sliminess and total lack of a moral core in the name of ambition.

I am surrounded by people who spend their lives doing work they believe in (if they are lucky enough to have a passion for something), or work hard at a job they dislike, to survive, and to support children if they have any. Some stay home with those children, if the kids are young and one parent can manage it.

I have a few upper-middle-class relatives and work clients, but none of us are rich. We don't have any political power beyond a single vote per person.

That's how decent people live, including many of your constituents. That's who Justice Ginsburg fought for.

She may very well have enjoyed being a force in the world, even being important and having power. She may well have had what we traditionally think of as ambition. I tend to be suspicious of people like that.

But, in her, I saw a person who was using that power to help decent people, especially those who can't get an advanced education or a job with power. If she enjoyed being important and handing down judgments, it looks, to me, like it was always driven and tempered by something inside her that asked if she was doing good in the world.

I don't see any of that in you. You just take advantage of decent people for whatever the fuck it is you think you gain by it. Luckily for us, you don't seem to be sly enough to hide it, or avoid going on the record with something we can all quote later, when you flip.

So, while I can't be bothered hating your guts or any other part of you, it's really not a mystery that people do, Lyndsey.

Edited by thoughtful
riffle, clarity
  • Upvote 9
  • I Agree 1
  • Love 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

"My 5-year-old asked Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 'Have you ever made a mistake?’ Here’s her answer."

Spoiler

Many years ago, my 5-year-old daughter penned a letter to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Naomi wanted to know if the justice had ever made a mistake. Ginsburg’s warm reply was heartfelt and deeply touching, and when she achieved rock star status as the “Notorious RBG,” I often thought about that letter and all that followed.

To begin at the beginning, this was not the first letter Naomi ever wrote. Once she had mastered her ABC’s and begun to write words, it occurred to me that she could string those words together into sentences and even write letters to get answers to her many questions. Her first letter was to the Coca-Cola Co., headquartered in Atlanta not far from where we live. Naomi had already spent three formative years in a Jewish preschool environment and wanted to know, “Why do you put Santa Claus on the Coca-Cola cans? Why don’t you put Jewish things on the cans?” The prompt reply came with a handful of stickers and a somewhat unsatisfying explanation that the company’s holiday packaging was meant to remind consumers of “social and family associations rather than religious ones.” Nevertheless, the fact that she heard back at all lit a fire.

More than 50 letters followed, letters written at a snail’s pace at our kitchen table in a child’s painstaking scrawl. I tried not to put thoughts in Naomi’s head, but I did help her find people to correspond with, so letters were dispatched posthaste to Princess Diana, John Glenn, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright (“How did you find out you were Jewish?”), Jimmy Carter, Coretta Scott King, folk artist Howard Finster (he drew her a tadpole) and countless others. They were published in 1998 when Naomi was 7, in a book called “Naomi Wants to Know.”

But Naomi’s letter to Ginsburg began with a question lobbed from the back seat of the car when she was 5 years old.

“What’s jail like?” she asked me.

I explained in simple terms how people wound up behind bars and the role of judges in helping juries determine guilt or innocence. I told her that one of the country’s most important judges was Jewish (do you sense a theme here?) and that she bore the same name as her beloved Grandmother Ruth. Naomi and Ruth are connected in the Old Testament, and the Bible was on Naomi’s mind as she sat down to write her letter.

In it, she included a drawing of a woman looking up at Justice Ginsburg and a drawing of two women standing before King Solomon, seeking his counsel.

image.png.23adb43629bf0189bef61ee4a2724ee7.png

image.png.cbc1a0d8d9060534d122c3ca06f3c6d0.png

Ginsburg’s tender reply, dated May 8, 1997, is a lesson in kindheartedness and humility. It also makes note of my persistence in sending the letter twice.

Here’s what she wrote:

Dear Naomi,

Thank you for your wonderful letter. Thinking about you, your words, and your drawing, I have been smiling all day.

I have two grandchildren. My grandson is named Paul, and my granddaughter is Clara. Paul is 10 and Clara is 6. They call me “Bubbie.”

In answer to your questions, I am not in charge of all the people in the United States, but I work hard to do my judging job well. And yes, I have made many mistakes, but I try to learn from them so that I will not make the same mistake twice.

Please tell your father I am glad he wrote to me, because I did not receive your letter the first time it was mailed to me.

Keep up the good work you are doing in school.

Every good wish to you, your parents, and your grandmother, Ruru,

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Ginsburg thoughtfully included a cartoon depiction of the court across which she had written: “And we order for Naomi Shavin a very bright day.”

Over the next few years, Naomi got to meet Ginsburg when she paid a visit to the Georgia State University College of Law and again when she spoke at a lecture series hosted by our local synagogue. It was at that second meeting that Ginsburg invited our family to visit her in her chambers if we were ever in Washington. We made a point of visiting Washington in June 2003.

By then, Naomi was going on 12 and could appreciate the surreal majesty of the moment. Her younger brother, Adam, was almost 9, and their younger sister, Sarah, was about to turn 6. We took in the exhibits on public display, and then an employee gave us a personal, behind-the-scenes tour of the building. We learned that the highest court in the land has a basketball court on the top floor. We saw a sign for an exercise class founded by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. We also learned that each of the justices could decorate their offices with paintings that were off display at the National Gallery of Art.

When we were ushered into Ginsburg’s chambers, it was like entering a library, quiet and still. The justice was diminutive but towering in her reputation. I grasped for words to express our gratitude. She remembered Naomi as the little girl who wrote letters. She told us how our fellow Georgian, Jimmy Carter, first elevated her to the federal bench before President Bill Clinton tapped her for the Supreme Court. She spoke to Naomi and Adam and Sarah in a tender, solicitous voice. She told them that schoolchildren from all over visited her and often brought her pins. She had them displayed on a ribbon of cloth and generously invited each of the children to take one. When Naomi tried to give her a second copy of her book of letters (she’d sent the justice a copy years earlier), Ginsburg signed it and handed it back to her.

I don’t recall much more about that meeting, but Naomi, now 29 and a Washington-based journalist at Axios, recently recalled Ginsburg’s “piercing blue eyes,” her kindness in trying to relate to a little girl from Georgia, and the example this champion of equal rights set for girls everywhere, but particularly “young Jewish girls.”

As Ginsburg’s many law clerks bore witness this week on the steps of the Supreme Court, her flag-draped casket was carried into that hallowed building to lie on the same catafalque that bore Lincoln’s body. And when the female rabbi began to intone our Hebrew prayers, I wept. If you are Jewish, there is something about hearing your ancient prayers, woven into the fabric of the American experience, that is almost inexpressible. It can only be felt. I wept at the loss of this remarkable woman, who fought so hard for others, who fought so hard for her own life and who touched our family in such a profound and personal way. That she lost her struggle just as Rosh Hashanah was beginning and we were wishing one another “Shana Tova,” a good year, only amplified our sense of despair. Now begins the task of replacing her, but, of course, she is irreplaceable.

In what seems like a lifetime ago, a letter from the Supreme Court of the United States arrived in our mailbox. It connected us to one of the most powerful women in the world. And it taught a little girl from Georgia that her voice mattered, that she mattered and that she might one day be able to achieve great things because her pen pal blazed a trail for her. That letter was then, and is now, a blessing.

 

  • Upvote 1
  • Love 14
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

A local tribute to RBG

Quote

A likeness of the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg looked down on East 12th Street in Dubuque on Thursday.

Artist Luis Valle sprayed paint onto the wall to fill in the details of Ginsburg’s head, which was surrounded by a red circle that will be filled in with a bright, golden halo.

“I want women out there to be inspired by a strong woman who made it all the way to the Supreme Court,” Valle said. “There’s strong women out there fighting for women’s rights, and hopefully, she was an inspiration.”

The mural is the newest to rise in Dubuque through the efforts of Voices Productions, which has commissioned dozens of pieces around the city in recent years and whose leaders are making plans for potentially two more yet this year.

“I think the messaging that we’re doing is positive,” said Sam Mulgrew, mural project director for the group. “I think that what we’re trying to do is on the right side of history. When you take a space and invest it with meaning, it becomes a place, and murals do that.”

Of course the Branch Trumpvidian sticks of fuck are probably all bent out of shape about this.  I have most of the local BTs blocked on FB so I don't see their horseshit in the comments.

  • Upvote 5
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 10/9/2020 at 1:15 PM, 47of74 said:

A local tribute to RBG

Of course the Branch Trumpvidian sticks of fuck are probably all bent out of shape about this.  I have most of the local BTs blocked on FB so I don't see their horseshit in the comments.

Yeah the letters are starting to come in whining about the image of RBG being up on a building.  The theme seems to be that the artists should be doing something local. 

Gonna hop out on my nice well worn limb and guess if this was painted on a building they'd be all happy and slapping each other on the back over how they owned the libs.

Spoiler

NuggetOfF.thumb.jpg.f12ac9fddada591bc13bcd9d61cc2065.jpg

 

  • Upvote 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Here’s the mural I mentioned that got the local BT / Reich to Life folks all bent out of shape. Went past it on today’s bike ride. 

35C23057-7236-4075-9DED-04870D70E0E8.thumb.jpeg.7a98efec1f2cf93c05193d34af741960.jpeg

  • Upvote 2
  • Thank You 1
  • Love 11
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 months later...

This is a nice tribute to RBG:

 

  • Upvote 4
  • Love 5
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now



×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.