Today I have a cold...and I made black bean soup...and it had chili and red pepper flakes and coriander...and it really was good because I could taste it. I was thinking about feminism and my mother who was so proud of her cooking. She would have made the soup without the spices...she might even have omitted the black beans. It didn't matter to her. She was a musician...that mattered. What is amusing is that she could convince people that her soup was authentic and that she knew what she was doing. I think she was a feminist...she didn't know she was of the "second sex." In 1940, the year that women got the vote, Ethel Stark created the Montreal Women's Symphony orchestra. My mother was a member. They had no instruments...they begged borrowed and stole them...and more importantly they learned how to to play them to the point where they performed in Carnegie Hall...They didn't know they were the second sex. They didn't know that what they did was impossible. They were musicians. They would do anything to make music.
Yesterday I was talking about her with a new friend. Talk about synchronicity. Said friend's step mother played the bassoon in the Women's Symphony Orchestra. Everywhere I go I meet the alumnae of that group. They wouldn't know that that was the year they got the vote. They would know that that was the year that they created an orchestra.
They wouldn't know that spices were important in soup!