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Birthday Wishes

Happy birthday to Eleanor Roosevelt, who was actually born Anna Eleanor Roosevelt. Franklin was her fifth cousin once removed--after their wedding, Theodore said to Franklin, "...there's nothing like keeping the name in the family."

I was raised to hold the Roosevelts up in high esteem, my parents being straight-ticket , yellow-dog democrats. As the phrase goes, they'd rather vote for a yellow dog than a republican, and they longed for the old days of the "solid south." Jimmy Carter ran for his second term when I was 18, so I drove myself to the polling station to be counted and stood at the back of a very long line. One of the poll workers asked if anyone was registered as a democrat--I proudly spoke up, the only one evidently, so I got to pass everyone else and vote first, a lot of good that did.

But back to Eleanor Roosevelt. She was every bit as much presidential material as her husband. Here are a few quotes that are a good representation of her character and insight:

We are afraid to care too much,
for fear that the other person does not care at all.

I think, at a child's birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift should be curiosity.

The only advantage of not being too good at housekeeping is that your guests are so pleased to feel how very much better they are.

Women are like teabags. We don't know our true strength until we are in hot water.

I once had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalogue: no good in a bed, but fine up against a wall.

Comments

dive said…
Happy birthday, Mrs. R.
A wise and lovely woman.
Grandpa Simpson claimed she provided the cartoon voice of Scratchy the Cat during WWII.
Whatever; she sure looks great in a hat.
9:51 AM
Neponset River Bridge Dig said…
She was quite the woman. Witty as hell.. My Dad said he married my mother only becuase her name was also Eleanor.
11:43 AM
Sassy Sundry said…
Ah, Jimmy. I remember that day clearly. It was my sister's fourth birthday (I was eight). We were playing on her new teeter-totter, and my parents (shame, shame) were hooting it up because Reagan won. She and I (both Democrats, a bit young then to have fully formed political opinions) exchanged some kind of look. We knew that things were going to get ugly.

I love Eleanor Roosevelt. Would that she had run.
11:53 AM
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