There is a French poem from the 15th century by a notorious poet named François Villon, who is also remembered for being an assassin and a thief. It is called “The Ballad of the Ladies of Yore” and has as its refrain a line well known in France: “Mais où sont les neiges d’antan?” But where are the snows of yesteryear?
We all feel that way sometimes. Things used to be better. The snow was whiter, in winter the storms were bigger, and when spring arrived, the tender beauty of the season blossomed quietly, taking us by surprise.
I remember frosty Easters when we covered our fluffy new dresses with winter coats and worried about slipping on patches of ice as we walked to church in our patent leather Mary Janes. I remember sun and warmth and springtime flowers as well. Back in those days of yesteryear, on Good Fridays, between 12 and 3 PM, all the stores in downtown Pottsville (and there were many) turned off their lights and locked the doors in respect for the Passion of Christ.
On Easter Sunday, after church, just like on Fifth Avenue in New York,
Pottsville had its Easter Parade on Centre Street. Ladies strolled in pastel
suits with matching hats. Back then, we girls and ladies were proud to wear our
Easter bonnets on Easter Day, straw hats with ribbons and artificial daisies or
cherries for the girls; for the ladies, hats that would have made the late
Queen Elizabeth II proud.
When we sat down to Easter dinner, many of us ate the same meal: baked ham, potato salad, pickled eggs and other trimmings, according to family tradition. As our parents and adult guests drank their coffee after the meal, we children, unsupervised, ran out to play.
The good old days, some might say, back when Pottsville was a real community. It was also a de facto segregated town. I don’t remember strolling in the Easter parade with African American families. Their community lived clustered around Minersville Street and the rest of us, well, we had the run of pretty much the rest of town. Back in those days, even Catholics and Protestants kept their distance. Some Catholic children on my block were not allowed to play with me. In my Protestant household, it’s true, we didn’t make it to church every week.
In my family both my parents worked. In the early 1960’s, my father did not have a good job. We depended on my mom’s salary as a teacher. When she began teaching in the 1940’s, elementary school teachers earned $1,000 dollars a year. My mother told me that when she was first hired, she was warned that having a baby was not compatible with the job.
By the 1960’s, many teachers did marry and it was a given that their husbands worked, a reason for keeping teaching salaries low. If they didn’t have a husband, their teaching was considered a vocation; they themselves, secular nuns. In general, in 1960, women earned 60% of what men earned for the same or comparable work.
The snows of yesteryear may appear whiter, but were we really better off then?
Yes and no, would be my answer. Until the Reagan years, the wealthiest Americans paid 70% of their earnings to the tax man. Since that time, their share of the tax burden has plummeted while their overall wealth has increased by 140%. In contrast, over the same period, the poorest Americans have gained about 20%, this according to a study by the Center for Public Integrity published in November 2022 (https://publicintegrity.org/inequality-poverty-opportunity/taxes/unequal-burden/how-four-decades-of-tax-cuts-fueled-inequality/ ). As for the middle class, their tax cuts have been modest as have been their gains.
Before the 1980’s, when it came to wealth and taxes, the United States was a more equitable place. The middle class, today declining in number, and the poor, a growing segment of the population, had a better chance of getting ahead. With the passage of the Economic Recovery Act of 1981, President Reagan initiated a series of tax cuts for corporations and the rich that were supposed to have a “trickle-down” effect. Since then, such theories have been exposed as bunk.
But tax breaks for the rich are not the only reason for changes in Pottsville. Many other factors came into play. Coal was dethroned as king a century ago. When the economy went global, it became cheaper to produce many goods overseas. First the mines, then the factories closed. There was also, there always has been, greed.
If I were going to “make America great again,” I would return to those days of fairer taxation, when rich and poor alike carried their fair share of the burden of making the United States a better place. I would not, however, do away with any laws or progress that have made life better and fairer for African Americans or for women. And I would certainly wish that everyone could receive good medical care at a fair and reasonable price. Society is close to rock bottom when insurance companies, and not doctors, can decide the life or death of policy holders through the rationing of care.
But we must not forget that Easter is a day of boundless hope. It is a day for laying aside fear. Pope John Paul II exhorted Christians, “Do not be afraid. Open, I say open wide the doors for Christ. To His saving power open the boundaries of states, economic and political systems, the vast fields of culture, civilization, and development.”
You do not need to be a Christian to be moved by these words. In the place of Christ, we could substitute “the common good,” bigger than any one individual.
When I was a child, I never saw a woman in the pulpit. Even in Protestant churches, men preached, women taught children in Sunday School, played the organ, sang or directed the choir.
In wishing for a better world on this day of boundless hope, I think of Mary Magdalene, the first to have seen the risen Christ. For so long, it’s been a man’s world. Might this not have been Christ’s way of saying, “Give women their fair chance and the world will be a better place.”
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Noli me tangere, Lavinia Fontana (1552-1614)
