Perhaps because April is National Poetry Month, I’ve been thinking about the James Oppenheimer poem Bread and Roses. Written in 1911 to celebrate the women’s rights movement, it was a (then) edgy call for women to be seen—body and soul—and to have all the rights and permissions that encompass the breadth of their being. A year later, when a strike broke out across Lawrence, Massachusetts textile mills (a reaction to the recent work opportunity and wage laws affecting primarily immigrant women), they borrowed the phrase, “bread and roses” from his poem to crystalize their fight.
Before the pandemic, I read this poem to my uncle right before our family set out for a lazy lunch at a bustling brasserie in Richmond, Virginia. We had be discussing the qualities of a “good poem” (which I find to be far much more subjective than he does) and it was a quick attempt to fulfill some of our poetry proclivities (for him: meter for me: fire). Later that afternoon, as we dined on freshly made baguettes and gratins and frisée salads with lardon, we could not know it would be one of the last times we’d break bread for the next year.
To break bread. The phrase has its roots in scripture with that famed Last Supper. Depending on your beliefs, it can mean receiving the holy eucharist or a casual night eating with others. But present in both the lay and religious meanings of breaking bread, is a functional and holy desire: to engage in ritual and grace. Lesser known in the B&R Oppenheimer phrase is the preceding part of the line: hearts starve as well as bodies (and then) but give us bread and give us roses! And I think what this poem gets at so well is not just that we have a strong desire to sustain ourselves but, that the quality of that sustenance is vital to our well being.
No matter how you slice it, this has been an abysmal time for female quality of life. By now, you all know the stats about America’s women being the COVID back up plan for childcare and extra housework. Here we are, all doing what we must day in and day out, and there’s little upshot. Where’s the glory? In short: we need those damn roses.
Roses have always symbolized love. To me, they represent nourishment and care and the vitality that comes with something well-tended—which is why I’m doing my best over here to tend to you as this STOCKED food and finance experiment chugs along. Next week, I’ll do a live cooking demonstration with a local male feminist chef to promote April’s Spring Drive. And next month, I’ll be rolling out a series of podcast interviews with all sorts of rad females across the food and finance spectrum. There’s even rumor of a summer picnic ecookbook in June…with cocktails.
We have proven we can trudge through this tough time, but let’s not neglect our desire for a bit of glory.
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What I’ve been up to:
Watching: Hemingway; Who Killed Sara
Eating: Calzones; priest stranglers; bacon fat-basted eggs
Reading: Emotional Agility (again); this gut punch of an essay by Melissa Febos; Kitty and the Sky Garden Adventure with Milla
Listening: The xx; Brene Brown’s (Pt.2) interview with Dr. Susan David
Thinking about: Nicaraguan jungles; herb gardens; closing my rings