Ida Rises

There was a craft fair in Woodlands Cemetery today, near my home. I missed the event last year and did not realize that it was to be such a big "do." All sorts of jewelry makers, candle & soap sellers, and other artists of real quality were selling their wares.

Here is a corner of the fair's area where a female acrobat performed from a hanging ring for the fair goers. The atmosphere was like the original use of the cemetery, I thought. In the mid-19th Century they were used as parks to stroll in, not mostly deserted places to think about death.

The acrobat does not know that the obelisk about fifty feet from her (seen just to the left of the taco cart) marks the grave of Free Speech Martyr Ida C. Craddock (1857-1902). Ida took her own life to avoid a 5-year prison sentence for sending "obscene" materials through the mails. The offending text was a booklet for newlyweds, suggesting that men take it easy and not rape their wives on the wedding night, as was then common because intelligent discussion of sex was forbidden.

I've blipped Ida's grave before, in Winter, and again in Summer, and last year again in Spring.

One very real reason why a woman can demonstrate her athletic skills in a public place in America wearing a minimal garment is because Ida Craddock was a brave a dedicated activist. This scene brings to mind Ida's defense of the belly dance in 1893, when orthodox Protestant churches fought to suppress all dancing, and the belly dance )performed for the first time in north America by Egyptians) was slurred with the ugliest racism and religious bigotry. Ida saw it as the perfect way for a modest woman to express her erotic passion in a spiritually enlightening way (which is exactly how the dance is understood in Egypt).

Tonight I re-read a few chapters of the 2010 book on Ida, Heaven's Bride by Leigh Eric Schmidt, and because I was not entirely whole for the first reading, it seems like I'm learning important things about this martyr for the very first time. Heck, I didn't even notice that he footnoted an article I wrote. It is a very fine book.

This picture shows a happy and health-affirming scene where families are watching the simple beauty of a human being. They are watching it in front of the grave of a person who was murdered by shit-souled Christian monsters for writing and teaching people about that same simple beauty.