PINK THREADS by Elisabeth Griffith

Please excuse a brief pause in posts.Your author has been distracted by caring for my adorable grand girl, who couldn’t go to daycare because she had a temperature, and by a still busted freezer compressor.I had planned to report on the infamous 1974 ordination of the Philadelphia Eleven, supposedly renegade female Episcopal priests.Ah well. Next year . . . Thank you for your patience. READER RESPONSES remain my reward for writing these snippets.

From Betsy: Voting rights for all Americans are being challenged. The president has claimed, without evidence, that there is widespread voter fraud. The Supreme Court has limited the protections of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The House has passed the SAVE (Safeguard American Voter Eligibility) Act, which would make it much more difficult for every American, but especially married women, to vote.

Dear Readers: I may have made an etymological error, by calling these collections of your comments LOOSE ENDS.It did not occur to me until today to check the meaning of the phrase. Webster’s defines it as “unfinished business, something left hanging loose,” which does apply to these additional details, but the term originated on ships, not in sewing rooms.It referred to the unsecured ends of ropes, which could cause accidents.

Author’s note: I imagine everybody in America has Fourth of July traditions. Growing up, ours included patriotic outfits, cookouts, neighborhood parades, fireworks at the high school, reading the Declaration aloud and singing patriotic songs. Once I moved to DC, there were concerts at the Capitol, fife and drummers and reenactors at the Archives and fireworks and flyovers on the National Mall. Some new Americans participate in citizenship ceremonies at Ellis Island, Mount Vernon and Monticello.

Wonder Woman, a comic book heroine, has been a feminist icon since she first appeared in 1941.The advocate of peace, justice and women’s rights was created by a Harvard-educated psychologist.William Marsden lived with his wife Elizabeth and student Olive Byrne, Margaret Sanger’s niece, fathering children with both women.Another woman he may have sexually exploited was Joye Hummel, who wrote the first three years of Wonder Woman scripts. The imaginary heroine was an Amazonian princess and warrior.

On this date, near the end of three different terms, the Supreme Court expanded the rights of same-sex couples, ruling repeatedly that treating them differently than opposite-sex couples was unconstitutional. The decisions reflected major changes in attitudes about the LGBTQ community since the Stonewall Riot on June 28, 1969.

Possible playlist:Dolly Parton’s “Nine to Five” (1980); Sondheim’s “Opening Doors” from Merrily We Roll Along (1981); the Boston Typewriter Orchestra, with music based on or performed by clacking typewriters (or Parton’s acrylic nails).

As always, readers have continued the conversation about PINK topics, American history and current events. FRONTIER WOMEN (5.24) prompted a New Yorker to alert me to a retrospective of twenty-eight “westerns” produced over 65 years by Universal Studios. Incorporated in 1912, it focused on rural and small-town audiences.Its first feature film and the earliest extant western was Straight Shooting, a silent film released in 1917.

At 4:00 p.m. on Wednesday, June 12, 1929, Republican First Lady Lou Henry Hoover hosted a small tea in the Green Room of the White House. It was the last in a series of parties welcoming the wives of newly elected members of Congress to Washington and introducing them to Washington society. Of the eight women serving in Congress in June 1929, five Republican and three Democratic representatives, seven were widows. The husband of Mary Norton (D-NJ) was not included.

As regular readers know, LOOSE ENDS includes your responses to past PINKS. This may be my favorite element of this enterprise, to connect and learn from you. My MOTHERS DAY (5.10) essay, about its history and the mifepristone case, continues to provoke responses. A reader in New jersey pointed out that the president has been unusually silent on mifepristone, angering his anti-abortion supporters, while HHS has cut $800 million from maternal and infant health programs.