The word freedom brings to American minds the birth of our nation: George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, the Liberty Bell, and the Statue of Liberty.  However, the Merriam Webster Dictionary defines freedom as, “the quality or state of being free,” as associated with slavery, necessity, compliance, no cost, et cetera.  The words liberty, independence, autonomy, and sovereignty number among its synonyms.  No matter what you call it, the feeling of being free is exhilarating.

The opposite of freedom is slavery, an issue over which our nation was once bitterly divided.  We fought a war and lost a President because of it, but we abolished the immoral and un-Constitutional practice of slavery.  There are, however, other types of slavery involving gender rather than the color of one’s skin.  While women in many nations still suffer from gender slavery, American women found a way to break free of these bonds.  They fought for and won the right to vote, be gainfully employed, compete in professional sports, and control what happens to their own bodies rather than allow the government dictate that for them.  American women realized all of these accomplishments while still retaining their ability to bear children, maintain their homes, and build loving families.

These freedoms are a far cry from what many of our female predecessors endured.  The entire task of maintaining the household fell to women, including cooking meals from scratch, cleaning up pots, pans, and dishes, washing and ironing clothing, scrubbing floors, raising children, and of course, keeping the breadwinner — the man — happy.  At night, women fell into bed exhausted and woke up to same old grind all over again.

If all of this sounds exhausting, consider how women have historically accomplished their Herculean chores.  There were no washing machines, only nearby creeks and rocks on which to pound laundry.  Someone later invented the washboard, which, for all intents and purposes, only saved the trip down to the creeks and the rocks.  Old-fashioned elbow grease was needed to use a washboard.  Afterwards, the clothes had to be ironed with a heavy flat iron heated on the stove.  They had to be dampened to keep them from burning, for steam irons were a thing of the future. Jack LaLanne had yet to be born and weight loss equipment had yet to be invented, but in days of old, there was no need for them.  Women kept in shape through their daily drudgery/slavery.

Yes, women have come a long way from their humble beginnings.

When God created the Earth, he populated it with the beasts of the land, the fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea.  In breathing life into these creatures, He made the males of the species the most beautiful, for it was incumbent upon them to attract females in order to propagate each species.  Apparently, this slipped God’s mind when he forged his last creation, Man, who was made in his own image (well, He was working feverishly for six days).  But before God rested on the seventh day, He surveyed what He had created.  He’d found that man, his crowning achievement, was beginning to act like an animal.  “He needs a female to keep him in line,” said God. “Let there be woman!”  And so, Eve came into being.  That’s when God finally let out his breath and said, “This is good!”

But then, Eve tempted Adam to eat the forbidden fruit. This original sin got the lovebirds kicked out of Eden, and we’ve been denied heaven on earth ever since.  Adam was forced to haul his cookies out into the cruel world and bring home the bacon, or maybe the wooly mammoth.   Eve got to stay home and take care of the cave and the kids.  As a result of these unhappy domestic circumstances, women became subservient to men.

Down through the ages, they struggled to be free.  They displayed extraordinary valor in the face of adversity, particularly in America.  In the battle of Monmouth in June of 1778, the wife of Army gunner Private John Hays carried pitchers of water to the gun crew during the heat of battle.  This bravery earned Mary Ludwig Hays McCauley the nickname “Molly Pitcher.”  But Molly’s courage did not end there.  After her husband was wounded in that battle, she took his place behind the gun to keep the British at bay. This made her a Revolutionary War heroine.

Then, there was Betsy Ross, who gave us our national symbol of pride.  The stars on the red, white, and blue flag that she sewed represented the 13 original colonies.

Despite achievements such as these, women could not vote or hold office in any State Before the Civil War.  On November 5, 1872 a group of women attempted to vote in a national election.  For this action, they were jailed and fined.  Among the notables was Susan B. Anthony, who refused to pay her fine, stating, “Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.”

Twelve years later, in a small church in Seneca Falls, New York, the National Women Rights Group gathered to discuss women’s civil and legal rights.  Dubbed “The Amazons” for their groundbreaking work, the assembly was led by Elizabeth Cody Stanton and Lucretia Coffin Mott.  Their struggle resulted in the passage of laws that empowered women.  The legislation included:

1.  the right to control their own earnings

2.  equal guardianship of children after divorce

3.  the right to maintain and control property

4.  the right to share in the estates of deceased husbands

5.  the right to enter into any occupation or profession, including attorney-at-law.

Finally, in 1919, after many States quibbled, the Congress of the United States of America passed the Susan B. Anthony Amendment of 1872; it was our 19th Amendment. This determined that, “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied by the United States or any State on account of sex.”  The Amendment became law on August 28, 1920.  It made the U.S. the 27^th country in the world to allow universal suffrage.  In the years to follow, many women contributed to the process of establishing and retaining the hard-won struggles of women in America.

In 1978, President Jimmy Carter honored Susan B. Anthony by placing her likeness on a silver dollar; it was modified from the existing silver dollar by size and weight. On July 2, 1979, the U.S. Mint released the Susan B. Anthony Dollar.  Because of its size, it closely resembled the quarter and that caused confusion among consumers and merchants.  As a result, it was replaced with a gold dollar coin.

During World War II, I saw native women in the Philippines washing clothes by beating them on a large flat rock by a stream.  This scene was indicative of how other countries have kept their women silent and subservient.  American women have led the charge in establishing freedoms for their gender.   But freedom always comes with a price.  There was an old saying, “A man works from sun to sun, but a woman’s work is never done.”  Today’s women have the aid of major appliances to accomplish what were once backbreaking jobs.  But it was a trade off, as more women now suffer from heart attacks and strokes.  And in changing their role as fully functioning members of society, women have become less dependent upon men.  As a result, the divorce rate has escalated and created another trade off:  the fracturing of the family unit.

Perhaps the evolution of the American woman can best be summed up in the words of the Dalai Lama (2006):

 

“Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.” 

 

Recently, I spotted an article listing the happiest States in which to live.  The article referred to States of the Union, not states of mind … although the two do seem inextricably intertwined.   Guess what?  According to that article, good old New Jersey was very close to the bottom of the list!

As you may have guessed, Florida and Hawaii headed the list of happiest places to live.  One of the reasons is no doubt the warm and mostly sunny weather. The Garden State, by contrast, attracts weather patterns that are largely unpredictable.  We’ve had winters with some 60-degree-plus days and as I write this, we’re gearing up for another dump by Mother Nature to the tune of 18 inches of snow … on top of the 8 we had in Central Jersey four days ago and the one that has left the poor residents of Cape May without power for three full days!  One point in our favor is that we do experience all four of the seasons … something that friends of mine in San Francisco with their year-round 62 to 67 degree weather think they’re missing out on.  Me, I’ll take Frisco any day over this Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde Jersey weather!

If you were not aware of this, Jersey’s state tree is the red oak, symbolic of the people who live here.  You have to be sturdy and strong enough to survive in the State with the densest population and the highest property taxes.

Back to that so-called happy place (please).  Another requisite to being happy, as per that oh so savvy article, is having a comfortable and affordable home.   Well, Jersey loses again in that quarter, as our housing costs are extremely high!  It used to be the American dream to own one’s home, but for some of us, that dream’s become a nightmare.

Here’s hoping that our new Governor Christie can make a difference and clean up some of the mess with the property taxes … and why am I now humming the old Who tune whose ending goes, “Meet the new boss: same as the old boss”? I must say, though, that I was a little stunned when our new Governor only threw a pizza party to celebrate his inauguration.  The pizza in this State is, at the risk of making a horrible pun, from hunger!  If pizza makes you happy, New York is the crown king, and I don’t mean upstate New York, either.  But hope springs eternal with Mr. Christie now at our helm.  Maybe he can shake some of the rats out of State government, the ones that have been poisoning it for decades.

For sure, he can do nothing about the horrendous traffic.  The roads are so ridiculous here normally, that when it snows heavily, exits on major and secondary roads are closed and you are left to wander aimlessly, like the Lord’s people in the desert before He took mercy upon them.   Even owning a car here can be quite costly, since the Garden State has some of the highest insurance rates in the nation.  On the plus side, while we’re wandering aimlessly looking for an exit within shouting distance of our destinations, we’ll never go hungry or run out of gas.  How can we?  Strip mall after strip mall after strip mall adorns our highways and byways.

As an antidote to the bland mediocrity of strip malls, Jersey boasts more than 600 roadside diners, some of which have even survived the Great Depression.  They include the White Rose, the White Diamond, the White Tower, and the White Manna.  I can’t understand the propensity for all of this white, unless the names do homage to the white bread on which sandwiches before my time were invariably made.

The diners began as abandoned trolleys, electric streetcars, and railroad dining cars that were refurbished and transported to busy neighborhoods.  You know the old saying about diners, don’t you?  “A diner is a place where you can always get a good breakfast and never get a great dinner.”   Many diners serve the hungry masses 24 hours a day with cheap and hearty American fare, such as hamburgers with Jersey tomatoes, freedom fries, and fresh Jersey eggs for breakfast.  Ernest Hemingway was said to have enjoyed the BLT’s at the Summit Diner in Summit, but maybe it was the key lime pies that called him down to the Florida Keys.

Traversing the Jersey Turnpike can be a little lesson in history.  The names of the rest areas recall famous New Jerseyans or Americans who have made noted contributions to our citizenry.  The names include:

• Thomas Edison, the innovative inventor who needs no further introduction,
• Clara Barton, the teacher who instituted the State’s first free school and later was instrumental in founding The Red Cross,
• John Fenwick, who established the first Quaker settlement,
• Richard Stockton, one of the men who’d signed our Declaration of Independence,
• Alexander Hamilton, a noted military figure who fought in the strategic Battle of Trenton,
• Woodrow Wilson, our 28th President, who received his education at Princeton University,
• Grover Cleveland, who served as our 22nd and 24th President,
• Molly Pitcher, the heroine of the Battle of Monmouth, who followed her husband into that battle to give water to the thirsty soldiers, and
• The literary contingent encompassing but not limited to the great poets Walt Whitman and Joyce Kilmer, as well as James Fennimore Cooper, one of the authors of the “Leather Stocking Tales” genre of early American literature. 

To this list we can add William Halsey, who was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey and was often referred to as “The Bull,” a moniker he picked up during WW II for his zest in fighting the Japanese.  Last but not least, we cannot fail to mention Vince Lombardi, who played football at St. Francis Preparatory School and later at St. Cecilia, a Catholic high school in Englewood.  Vince grew up to be a great football coach who led Jersey’s own Giants as well as the Green Bay Packers and the Washington Redskins.

Lest you think all is rosy in the Garden State, nay!  We have our share of gangs in the urban areas as well as our own Devil, for whom our hockey team is named, and the reason why people keep looking over their shoulders in the Pine Barrens.  We are the fifth smallest state in the Union blessed with, at the risk of repeating myself, the largest population! Our geography is diverse, although much of it is swamp, and you can see this for yourself as you break the speed limit flying down the Garden State Parkway from Little Egg Harbor to all points south.  On more solid turf, our Kittatinny Mountains comprise the largest mountain range on the East Coast.  Along the Atlantic shore, there are miles and miles of resorts, while our farm land is shrinking (sorry, but Rutgers U’s educational farms on Cook Campus don’t count).  We are in close enough proximity to make a quick visit to New York or Pennsylvania, and I’d pick the Big Apple if I’d had my druthers.  I’m not sure how many of you know this, but Jersey’s topography was carved out by the Wisconsin Glacier 150,000 years ago.

Back to finding that so-called happy place in which to reside.  As you may have guessed, solid employment is a major consideration and in this respect, Jersey falls short of the mark.  We used to be a buzzing hub of manufacturing, particularly pharmaceuticals, but the second-world nations have taken over much of our manufacturing, thanks to the greed on all fronts.  Although jobs are still scarce, Lennox china has been made here since 1889 and has a discount retail outlet in Cranbury.  Maxwell House coffee got its start in Jersey, and the Campbell’s soup company originated in Camden.  UMDNJ is still our principal teaching hospital, and it remains engaged in the research of innovative medical treatments.  Bell Labs, now Alcatel, has headquarters in Murray Hill, Union, and Holmdel. 

This state also has lots of agriculture with its tomatoes, cranberries, peaches, Winesap apples, Jersey sweet corn, string beans, blueberries, pumpkins, strawberries, spinach, squash, asparagus, and melons.  Points just north of West Cape May boast at least six vineyards, because the climate and soil mimic that of Sicily, where some of the world’s tastiest wines are made.

Although we are a pretty small State and not, perhaps, the happiest place to live, it still has lots of exciting milestones:

• The first radio signal was transmitted in Princeton in 1840
• The first baseball game was played in Hoboken in 1846
• The first Boardwalk was built in Atlantic City in 1847
• Thomas Edison created the first phonograph in 1887
• In 1921, the First Miss America Pageant was held in Atlantic City
• In 1931, the George Washington Bridge opened
• During 1941 to 1945, Fort Dix processed 1 million draftees for WWII
• In 1951, the New Jersey Turnpike opened
• The Meadowlands opened in 1976 as a sports/entertainment complex
• Casino gambling was legalized and began attracting high and low rollers alike, in 1978
• Christine Todd Whitman was the first woman to be elected Governor (1993)
• The New Jersey Devils captured the 1995 NHLS Stanley Cup

Jersey has its faults, but many of us who reside here love it, a happenstance that puts me in mind of a quote of Abraham Lincoln’s.  It’s an interesting take on the state and States of our happiness:

“Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”