My mother-in-law passed away recently. I had a good relationship with her, despite the fact that we were both stubborn people with frequently divergent opinions.
Alta was a poet, famous in some circles for both her poetry and her press. Andrew Gilbert has written an outstanding obituary on kqed.org that really does her justice.
Though Alta was complex, loved attention, and was sometimes overly dramatic, I liked her and have an enormous respect for her life’s body of work. She dedicated herself to art, compassion, equality, and all the qualities that I consider to be progress in the greater picture of civilization.
We live in an era where the radical right is actively dismantling human rights, especially women’s rights. Abortion rights have been trashed, they are coming hard for birth control, and famous influencers say publicly that women should lose the right to vote.
But because of the work of Alta and her peers, the right faces an uphill battle. There are too many female role models in all walks of life to say with any credibility that women “can’t” occupy a particular societal role. There are simply too many living, successful counter-examples of women playing prominent roles in the arts, politics, sciences, and every other sphere. Women still face discrimination prejudice, and under-representation in many fields, but culturally we’re in a much different place than when Alta was growing up. And that’s partially due to her work.
So hats off, and respect.