Some interesting quotes from Grace Paley

I just finished reading the book Just as I thought (well, honestly, I skimmed over the last 1/3, but I really enjoyed the first 2/3!), essays by Grace Paley. She was born in 1922 and died in 2007 after a battle with breast cancer. In addition to being a writer, she was a political activist.

I especially liked the following quotes:

I don't think the thing for me has been civil disobedience so much as the importance not asking permission. For instance, we had kids in our public school who had trouble reading or writing. A few of us just got together and said we'd better go ahead and help out. We suspected that the principal wouldn't want us around. So we simply went into the school and scattered ourselves among the teachers and began to work with the kids. It's true that three months later we were kicked out, but we got a lot done, and methods and forms were created so parents could come back and be useful. People will say to this day, "How did you women do that? Who did you talk to?" We didn't talk to anyone. We just did it. So I can't say it was civil disobedience. It was just an effort to make change by making change. We talk a lot about living in a free and democratic country but we're always asking permission to do very simple things.

and

[She was in jail as a result of attending a protest, and heard women singing and long song and wanted to write it down because she didn't think she cold memorize it, but she had no pen or paper.]

...Which is how I finally understood that I didn't lack pen and paper but my own memorizing mind. It had been given away with a hundred poems, called rote learning, old-fashioned, backward, an enemy of creative thinking, a great human gift disowned.

This second quote makes me think of all of the time I wasted learning "things" that someone else thought I should "know" -- and grateful for the things I've learned that have been useful, like music and sewing and writing. The first quote reminds me to be brave, and not give away my rights, I'm thinking especially as they pertain to my children and family.