welcome, welcome to day 47 of a season of peace and to our weekly installment of the astonishing light of being peace…
yesterday, indomitable peace activist and astonishing light of being peace, Frances Crowe turned 100 and her beloved community joins with her in celebrating her radical soul… a legend in the Pioneer Valley of western Massachusetts, she was honored in her beloved community with 100 signs for 100 years… what a legacy, the changing of so many lives in her devotion to peace…
What can one being do to further peace? Listen to what a couple of friends say about Frances…
“Frances Crowe called me in the early ‘80s to ask if I would produce “Handy Dandy,” a play by William Gibson at a theater company I was managing in Northampton. The two-character play tells of the complex exchange — about conscience and the law — between a nun who is arrested for protesting a nuclear power plant in Cambridge and the judge she comes before. Of course, Frances related to the play since she had been — even then — arrested innumerable times. When asked how many times, she said, “Not enough.” I agreed to produce the play, and that’s how our work together began.
In the almost 40 years I’ve known Frances, these are things I think are true: she does not suffer fools gladly and she can spot hypocrisy from miles away; she is unrelenting (persistent is an understatement); she sees what it will take others years (maybe even decades) to see; she thinks of everything she can do and then she does it. A very partial list includes showing thousands of films, handing out probably millions of leaflets and petitions, committing acts of civil disobedience and being willing to suffer the consequences; using social media like Democracy Now! before there was social media; organizing thousands of protests, public events like the first Martin Luther King, Jr. Day celebrations and the Hiroshima and Nagasaki commemorations and more. Finally, she enlists everyone she can think of to help carry out the work.”
~Lois Ahrens~
“Working with Frances, I find that she lives exactly how she believes — leaving a small footprint and living simply so that others may simply live… Daily, I get a hands-on lesson in just how she does it…”
~Carolyn Oates~
“I met Frances Crowe on the street in Northampton before the Iraq war. She gave me that broad smile and probably a flyer. My husband, Bill, and I fell under her spell because what Frances was saying then and what she’s saying now makes sense. It’s pretty simple stuff: stop war and weapons sales; save the children — ours and theirs — from senseless suffering and death.
Bill and I had young children. Imagining planes dropping bombs on other people’s children spurred us into action. We found ourselves on the weekly vigil line, making posters, marching and traveling to protests. Frances affirmed something in me. Seeing how she made her life’s vocation the ending of war changed me. As an artist, my sculptures tended to chronicle my family and friends, but I found myself turning to art with a mission.
I’ve made a number of sculptures and drawings of Frances. She isn’t easy to capture — so much humor and passion rolled into one. One of my pieces celebrates the weekly vigil organized by the Northampton Committee to Lift the Sanctions on Iraq. I sculpted the many individuals who stood on the line, with Frances out in front, speaking to two soldiers. To Frances, everyone is worth attention, deserves respect and is worth convincing.
Frances’ passion simply washes away other concerns. She’s not bothered or constrained by her physical size, her sex or her age. Sometimes I think our instinct is to minimize these things, along with race, social class and stridency, in order to fit in. This may very well keep us from our most forceful action. But Frances uses every part of herself to advance her cause. And this is some of what it takes to make a good piece of expressionist art. A recognition that our voice and our message is more important … well, than anything. It’s nearly an act of faith that in getting the message into the world our shortcomings will actually be transformed into assets.
How is it that Frances’ welcoming, challenging message has sunk so deeply into our psyches? Every day I think we borrow a piece of her courage and conviction, the conviction that there can be a better place and a better way. For now, it may only be a place held in the mind’s eye, yet it feels real, this place of No War.”
~Harriett Diamond~
