Marilyn Monroe at 100--The Candle in the Wind

                     

                                    Quintessential Marilyn--frank, inviting, vulnerable.

One hundred years ago on June 1, 1926 baby Norma Jean was born in Los Angeles to an attractive young woman who worked as an RKO film cutter.  Mortenson was the name on her birth certificate.  Her father abandoned the family before her birth and her mother Gladys took to calling her Norma Jean Baker, the name she would use through childhood, after an earlier lover.  She was never sure who her father was and her mother, who battled mental illness kept a parade of men through the house between periods in an institution. 

By age six she was being farmed out to relatives and friends with unhappy periods in foster care.  Her longest term care giver, a family friend, filled her with fantasies of becoming a movie star.  At age nine she began two years of Dickensonian torment in the Los Angeles Orphan’s Home working in the kitchen for 5 cents a week.  She was released to yet another foster home. 

After a brief turn at Van Nuys High School, she took a job at age 16 at a Los Angeles aircraft plant applying dope to canvas wing covers.  She married co-worker James Doughety mostly to avoid being sent to another foster home.  He was soon inducted into the service.  

                         

                                     What started it all--Mrs. Doughety at the defense plant.

A photographer visiting the plant to document women war workers zeroed in on the attractive girl and suggested that she become a model.  Although her first shoot paid only $5, it was enough to get her to quit the plant.  Soon she was getting regular work in pin-up and bathing suit pictures, in addition to some commercial work.  She was modeling under the name Norma Jean Doughety when photos came to the attention of producers. 

In 1946, the same year she divorced her husband in Las Vegas, she signed a development contract with 20th Century Fox, where her name was changed to Marilyn Monroe.  Monroe had been her mother’s maiden name.  Marilyn was borrowed from Marilyn Maxwell, a second-tier Betty Grable.  She was given bit parts and promoted with things like being named Miss California Artichoke Queen in 1947.  After walk-ons and bits, she was cast in a small speaking part as waitress in the turgid teen melodrama Dangerous Years.  Her contract was not renewed, and Marilyn returned to modeling and took acting lessons. 

With an I.Q. above 160 Marilyn was always trying to improve herself and yearned to become a serious actress.  She also read voluminously, focusing on history, biography, and literature.  She felt cheated by her lack of formal education and wanted to be able to hold serious conversations.

She was briefly picked up by Columbia Pictures, where she got the second lead with two songs in the burlesque musical Ladies of the Chorus.  Despite personally good notices for this B-picture, Columbia dropped her contract. 

In 1949 she appeared in the Marx Brothers’ final feature film Love Happy in a brief role as detective Groucho’s client.  By this time, she had changed her light brown hair to a golden blonde and was rooming with another buxom aspiring blonde, Shelly Winters.  Her modeling assignments, which that year included the famous nude calendar art shoot that ended up years later as Playboy’s first centerfold, were getting more attention. Despite lacking a studio contract her personal publicist was giving her the standard starlet build-up and she was beginning to get noticed in gossip columns and fan magazines. 

1950 was Marilyn’s break out year in two small, but unforgettable appearances—MGM’s Asphalt Jungle, and even more memorably as the bombshell at Margo Channing’s (Bette Davis) party in All About Eve.  Her roles were getting bigger and better.  She was a war-buddy distraction to William Lundigan as the husband of June Haver in the domestic comedy, Love Nest.

She was second billed, but this movie made her a top star.

In 1953 Marilyn stunned audiences as the mentally ill hotel babysitter in Don’t Bother to Knock with Richard Widmark, a role which drew on her own insecurities and demons.  The same year she displayed her knack for comedy in Monkey Business with Ginger Rogers and Cary Grant.  It was her first performance as a platinum blonde, a shade selected to differentiate her from her aging co-star Rogers.  The same year her turn as a murderess in the film noir Niagara with Joseph Cotton was another reminder of her serious acting chops.   But it was the busy actress’s role in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes with her memorable turn as Lorelei Lee made Monroe a true star of the first rank.  She capped the year playing a very dumb, bespectacled blonde in the ensemble comedy How to Mary a Millionaire with another predecessor as Hollywood’s blonde bombshell du jure, Betty Grable.  

Wedding day with Joe DiMaggio.

In January of 1954 she married baseball superstar Joe DiMaggio and was soon on a famous USO tour to Korea where the attention of the troops stunned her new husband.  The shy and reserved DiMaggio wanted Monroe to quit her career, resulting in a divorce in less than a year, although the pair remained friendly, and DiMaggio famously carried a torch for her even after her death.  Wearing mostly tight jeans and plaid shirt, she made Otto Preminger’s western adventure, The River of No Return with Robert Mitchum and the show-biz musical There’s No Business Like Show Business in which she held her own with musical heavy weights Ethyl Merman, Dan Dailey, and Donald O’Connor.  Her next film was the comic hit Seven Year Itch remembered for its iconic publicity shot of her white dress billowing around her waist as she stood over a subway ventilation grill.

During filming, there were reports of chronic lateness on the set and other problems began to surface.  Always plagued with self-doubt and probably suffering from genetic bi-polar disorder, she also had genuine health problems—a serious gynecological condition, endometriosis, that could be quite painful. 

In 1955 Monroe was suspended by Twentieth Century Fox for refusing to make How to be Very, Very Popular and The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing because she wanted to break away from her image as a sex symbol.  She fled to New York City where she joined Lee Strasberg’s Actor’s Studio to study Method acting.  She also began serious Freudian analysis and spent time with the city’s literary set, where she met playwright Arthur Miller.  After nearly a year off, she returned to Hollywood and played in the screen adaptation of William Inge’s acclaimed play Bus Stop.  This time she finally wowed critics as well as the audience with her nuanced performance as the fragile, innocent sexpot Cheri.

Next up was a trip to England to be directed by and co-star with Lawrence Olivier in The Prince and the Show Girl, where her chronic lateness and her devotion to the Method drove the traditionally trained Olivier nearly to distraction. 

Monroe took most of 1958 off to study and spend time with Miller.  In 1959 she had her greatest success in a comedy in writer/director Billy Wilder’s Some Like it Hot.  With personal acting coach Paula Strasberg on the set, she was a problem and demanded as many as 83 takes before she felt she had “nailed it.”  Wilder and co-star Jack Lemon were patient with her, but leading man Tony Curtis was so frustrated that he compared kissing Monroe to “kissing Hitler.” 

Monroe’s troubled marriage to Miller was coming unwound with her bouts of depression, angry accusations that Miller did not respect her, and casual love affairs.  A liaison with French actor Yves Montand during the making of George Cukor’s musical comedy dud Let’s Make Love was just one last straw in the marriage.  Monroe by this time was heavily dependent on sleeping pills and sedatives. 

The Misfits, fine dramatic tour de force for the stellar cast, will forever have an aura of doom clouding it after Clark Gable's death.  It was also one of Clift's last films, and Monroe's last completed film.

With their marriage already rocky, Miller wrote gift screenplay for Monroe—The Misfits starring Clark Gable, Montgomery Clift, Thelma Ritter, and Eli Wallach directed by John Huston which was shot in 1960 and released in February 1961 following Gable’s fatal heart attack.

Miller and Monroe announced their separation shortly after Gable’s death, for which Marilyn felt guilty.  Soon she was hospitalized in a mental institution so stark that a desperate call to former husband DiMaggio got him to drive from San Francisco to retrieve her and help her find another institution.   

Monroe wore no underwear and had to be sewn into the tight beaded gown she wore when she crooned Happy Birthday, Mr. President to John F. Kennedy causing a scandal.

Upon release she restlessly became involved with serial affairs including liaisons with Rat Pack leader Frank Sinatra and his pal Peter Lawford, who introduced her to his in-laws John and Robert Kennedy.  She had affairs with both, which was an ill-kept secret in Hollywood.  Monroe created something of a scandal and a sensation when she crooned Happy Birthday, Mr. President to John in a shimmering sheath dress so tight she had to be sewn into it.

These relationships, made public in the years after her death, shaped her legend and fed a thousand conspiracy theories.  One conspiracy theory proved to be true—FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover had every room of her Hollywood home bugged in an attempt to get damaging goods on the President and/or his boss Bobby, the Attorney General.  The super-sophisticated bugging equipment was discovered hidden in the house when it was remodeled in 1972.

Her reputation for unreliability made it hard for Monroe to get parts even at her home studio Fox.  They gave her one last chance with the comedy Something’s Got to Give, but production was suspended because of her chronic absences from the set.  Footage released later, including a stunning swimming pool scene, revealed that Monroe remained luminous on film no matter her personal demons. 

With a genius level IQ Marylin sought out the company of great minds like Carl Sandburg and Albert Einstein--and they reveled in her company.

Despite all of these problems Monroe was in discussions for several projects and was reported in good spirits by friends shortly before her death.  In her last days DiMaggio, concerned about “the people she had fallen in with,” reportedly was ready to ask her to re-marry him.  

On August 5, 1962, hours after last speaking to DiMaggio, Monroe was found on her bed with the phone in her hand.  She was naked, but ordinarily slept without clothes.  Several bottles of pills were found.  Her personal physician reported that he found the body after being alerted by the housekeeper. 

Police found several inconsistencies in various accounts given of her final hours and evidence that the scene had been tampered with, including the laundering of the bed linens and removal of any water glass.  Autopsy results indicated death as acute barbiturate poisoning and a likely suicide.  Revelations of the Kennedy connections have fueled dozens of conspiracy theories. 

Joe DiMaggio left roses at Monroe's crypt every year on the anniversary of her death until he died.

DiMaggio claimed Monroe’s body and arranged her funeral.  Famously, he left a dozen roses at her mausoleum vault every year on the anniversary of her death.   Monroe’s will left 25% of her estate to her acting coach, Lee Strasberg and 25% to the Freud Institute for Psychoanalysis. 

Her life, death and career have sparked an industry, including over 600 books.  Marilyn seemed to be everywhere with new books, an award winning 2011 film with Michelle Williams, My Week with Marilyn, based on her time in England doing The Prince and the Show Girl, the TV series Smash! chronicling the road to Broadway for a Marilyn musical, and Ana de Armas in 2021 in Blonde, the second film version of Joyce Carol Oates’ fictionalized biography. 

But back in 1973 Elton John and Bernie Taupin may have summed up Norma Jean/Marilyn Monroe’s life best: a Candle in the Wind.

Six Years Ago Today—To Matilda Motoko Holmes on Her Birth

  

Matilda, you were brand new. 

Note—Granddaughter Matilda was born on Sunday, May 31, 2020—traditional Memorial Day that year—at 10:40 am.  That was just in time for me to make the exciting announcement in the virtual coffee hour following Tree of Life UU Congregation Coronavirus Zoom services.  How could I forget. 

To Matilda Motoko Holmes on Your Birth

May 31, 2020

I understand you can’t read this.  You have been very busy getting born, learning how to breathe and such.  Hopefully your mother will keep a copy of this to share with you on some appropriate birthday a few years from now.

On the day you were born the sky was crystal blue and everything was lush green bursting with young life to greet you like the young ducklings on the pond and bunnies in their burrows.  The Web of All Existence greeted you.

 

Your Mom and Dad were there, of course.  

It couldn’t have happened without them.  And frankly you were a lot of work to get born.  It was even a little scary but your new life prevailed.  You were welcomed in the arms of love.

A whole tribe waits anxiously to greet you—two grandmas, aunts, uncles, cousins, and an odd old Papa.  And there is your second Cousin Sienna who is just one year older than you and will be your playmate and guide for years of coming adventures.  And did I mention the dogs Piper and Ginger who will protect you from marauding pirates and Piper at least will curl up to sleep with you.

                         Some of your clan--Papa, your Mom, Aunt Heather, Grandma, and Aunt Carolynne.  There are lots more.

You will come home in a couple of days or so with your Mom to Grandma Kathy and Papa’s little house.  It will be your first home.  You will have others, but that first one is very special.  Grandma will spoil and play with you.  Papa will take you on his walks—the stroller is ready to be your carriage into the world—and looks forward to singing strange lullabies to you and reading books with you when you are a little older.

The day you were born used to be Memorial Day before that holiday got moved.  And in a way that connects you to two great grandfathers, Papa Art Brady and Papa Willard Murfin who were soldiers in World War II which will be 100 years past when you are a young woman.  In fact, you are connected to ancestors on both sides of your family whose interesting lives made yours possible.  You are part of a great river of humanity.

Beyond your kin and home there are many friends waiting to greet you and support you on your life journey—your folks’ friends, your whole neighborhood, the Sisters Grandma Kathy works with, and the good people at Papa’s church.  It takes a village to raise a child and you have many villagers to guide you.

The day you were born everyone wore masks.

But I am sorry, not everything was pixie dust and unicorns on the day you were born.  The wide world was a freighting mess.  You were born in the middle of the great Coronavirus pandemic of 2020 which is why no one but your Mom and Dad could be with you in the hospital.  Even after you get home many of your clan will have to wait to see you and play pass the baby until it is safe.  People will wear masks on their faces.  They are scared for themselves—and for you.

Climate change—I am sure you will have heard of it when you can finally read this—is making over the world.  Where you live it will be hotter and wetter, snowier in the winter, apt to big, dangerous storms.  Everything will change from the way things once were.  Your parents and grandparents will have to do everything they can to keep that change from being catastrophic.

The country you live in is riven by bitter division.  Ominous forces are at work.  The free democracy of your parents and ancestors is threatened.  Fascism—I am sorry you will have to learn what that is—looms and some long for a civil war.  Many good people, however, are doing everything they can to prevent that and to leave you a free and safe country.  But it will be a struggle.  

The day you were born Papa was here to help make the world better for you. 

Even sadder, on the day you were born cities across America were torn by demonstrations, protests, riots, looting, and violence.  All because Black people in this country are not safe from violent assault by police and because a long sad history of white oppression has been unmasked again.  Your world will not be safe until Black children are safe.

That is why Papa on the day you were born went to Woodstock to hold a sign that said Black Lives Matter and march around the Square with hundreds of others.  He pledges to spend the rest of his life fighting to give you a better world than the one in which you were born.

                                Matilda opts for bold fashion choices these days.

The ancient Chinese had a curse—“May you live in interesting times.”  You were born on a day in the middle of interesting times.  Bless you as you make your way through them.

With all the love in the world,

Papa

Amelia and Her Shocking Bloomer--The Intersection of Feminism and Fashion

   

Amelia Bloomer should be remembered as among the founding sisterhood of the Women’s movement as an attendee of the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, a lifelong suffrage and temperance reformer, a pioneering female journalist, and the first American woman to own and publish a newspaper.  But she is not.  Instead, she is remembered for a fashion fad or, if you prefer, a radical attempt to reform women’s clothing that she neither invented nor was the first to wear.

Amelia Jenks was born on May 27, 1818 Homer, New York on the southern end of the Finger Lakes District.  Her family were respectable people with a limited income but who encouraged all of their children to get some education.  Amelia, a very bright child, got a rudimentary education in local schools.  At the age of 17 she was among the first generation of young women who for whatever reason did not immediately marry but became schoolteachers.

After a year, she relocated to Waterloo, New York, seat of Seneca County where she lived with her newly married older sister before taking a job as a live-in governess to the Oren Chamberlain family.

In 1840 Amelia married attorney Dexter Bloomer and moved to a large, comfortable home in nearby Seneca Falls.  There, her life, you should pardon the pun, began to blossom.  Not only was she now a member of the comfortable and respectable middle class with a fine husband and growing family, that husband was unusually supportive of her expanding her universe.  Dexter recognized her keen natural intelligence and encouraged her to read widely and acquire in that way the education she had missed.  He also made pains to include her in conversations about the politics and current affairs in which he was interested.

In addition to his law practice Bloomer published the local newspaper, the Seneca Falls County Courier.  He encouraged Amelia to become a contributor to its columns and as time went by and as he was increasingly engaged in his law practice, she informally assumed some editorial duties.

 Amelia Bloomer as a young woman in Seneca Falls, New York.

Amelia also found a close, supportive circle of friends.  It was an unusually sophisticated group, going beyond the swapping recipes, embroidery parties, quilting bees, prayer meetings, and gossip sessions that were the expected purview of “hen parities.”  The women, mostly Quakers and Universalists, were widely read and included active reformers interested in the abolition of slavery, temperance, and, increasingly, the rights of women.  The group included Elizabeth Caddy Stanton, an attractive young mother about Amelia’s age who had even ventured to far off London to attend an anti-slavery convention only to be debarred from participating on account of her sex.  On her return, Stanton and her close friend, Quaker Mary Ann McClintock began to focus discussions in the group more closely on women’s issues.

In the summer of 1848 Stanton and McClintock, leaders of the Western New York Anti-Slavery Society, decided to hold a hastily called convention to discuss women’s rights and take advantage of a visit by the well know Quaker lay minister and reformer Lucrecia Mott to the area. 

Although Bloomer, whose own activism had to this point been concentrated in Temperance work, was not one of the core organizers, she made sure that Stanton’s call to convention was published in the Courier and by exchange in most of the newspapers in Upstate New York.  When the Convention was convened on July 19 Bloomer did not seem to have been in attendance.  Perhaps she was among those who could not squeeze into the Wesleyan Methodist Chapel, which was mobbed by an unexpectedly large crowd of both women and men.  But Bloomer did manage to find a seat in the balcony on the second day and thus got to hear the debate about the Declaration of Sentiments.  All but a final demand added personally by Stanton—one calling for the extension of suffrage to women—passed unanimously, but that clause stirred vigorous debate.  Even Lucrecia Mott opposed it.  Stanton argued passionately and it was eloquently defended by Fredrick Douglass.  She also heard Mott’s stirring speech that night.  She was both impressed by it all and more determined to make the cause of women her own.

 Bloomer came into full ownership of the early newspaper for women The Lilly making her the first woman to publish a newspaper in the United States.

Shortly after the convention the Seneca Falls Ladies Temperance Society was founded and launched a newspaper for “private circulation to members.”  From the beginning, Bloomer assumed editorial direction of The Lily.  At first, aside from Temperance appeals, the paper copied other publications for the ladies and included recipes, homemaking tips, and advice for domestic tranquility.  But Bloomer was soon turning more of its pages over to women’s issues.  She invited Stanton and Susan B. Anthony to contribute.

By 1850, perhaps because some members of the Temperance Society were uncomfortable by the new direction, the Society dropped its sponsorship.  Bloomer assumed ownership and total editorial control.  She became, almost accidently, the first woman to publish a newspaper in the United States.  And it was successful.  Circulation climbed to more than 4,000 copies, many of them being sent by mail all over New York State and into New England.  Its influence grew.

Bloomer later described why she shifted the focus of The Lily to women’s rights,

It was a needed instrument to spread abroad the truth of a new gospel to woman, and I could not withhold my hand to stay the work I had begun. I saw not the end from the beginning and dreamed where to my propositions to society would lead me.

The fortune of the newspaper and Bloomer’s fame took an unexpected turn in 1851.  Temperance activist Libby Miller that year adopted the fashion first suggested in the health fad magazine the Water-Cure Journal in 1849.  Miller considered it a more rational costume for women who were encumbered by yards of cloth skirts and layers of petticoats.   The loose trousers, similar to those worn in the Middle East and Central Asia were gathered at the ankles and topped by a short dress or skirt and vest were first called Turkish Dress.   Miller’s campaign to have the outfit adopted widely received a boost when the famed English actress and abolitionist Fanny Kemble began to wear it publicly.

Stanton was an early adopter of the fashion and wore it on a visit to Bloomer that year accompanied by Miller, probably with copy in hand for The Lilly.  Bloomer’s first reaction was unadulterated joy at the liberation of the new style.  She quickly adopted it as her own and began to vigorously advocate it in her publication.

Her articles were picked up by other publications, including Horace Greeley’s sympathetic New York Tribune.  From the Tribune the subject of “pantaloons for ladies” for ladies went the 19th Century equivalent of viral.  Unfortunately, most of the press were not as supportive as Greeley.  They mocked the fashion and all who wore them, singling out Bloomer for scorn.  Soon they were calling the outfit itself Bloomers.  Reaction ranged from bemusement to savage satire in editorial cartoons, to the expected thundering of preachers denouncing the “debauchery of our daughters.”

                                            Amelia Bloomer posed for this daguerreotype in the outfit that was beginning to be named for her in 1851. 

Bloomer was a bit mortified by the attention but refused, at least at first, to back down. 

The costume of women should be suited to her wants and necessities. It should conduce at once to her health, comfort, and usefulness; and, while it should not fail also to conduce to her personal adornment, it should make that end of secondary importance.

Despite the scorn and criticism, Bloomers did take off, at least among independent minded women, including the first generation of female college students.  A Bloomer Ball for elegant ladies was organized in New York City.  And the fashion was readily adopted by female travelers and in the west where commodious skirts were an impairment and inconvenience. 

Who was the typical Bloomer wearer?  I picture spunky young Louisa May Alcott, a grown up tomboy who wanted to carve out an independent career as a professional writer.

Bloomers were ridiculed in cartoons on both sides of the Atlantic.  Most of them, like this one from England in 1851, suggested that wearing the garment would result in role reversal and the emasculation of men.

By the end of the 1850’s the fad, never widely adopted by respectable middle-class women, was dying out.  Even Bloomer herself was having second thoughts.  She believed that the widespread introduction of crinoline, which made those layers of petticoats lighter in weight and less uncomfortable in oppressive summer heat, made Bloomers obsolete.

The Civil War revived some interest as some nurses adopted the costume—although not those under the command of notoriously prudish Dorothy Dix.  Later in the century they were adapted as undergarments to replace petticoats and in a simplified form as athletic wear for college girls.  There was a revival of interest during the World Columbian Exposition in Chicago where suffragist Lucy Stone extolled them in a speech at the Women’s Pavilion and a fashion show displayed up-dated versions.

Bloomers made something of a comeback after suffragist Lucy Stone extolled them at the World's Colombian Exposition in Chicago and got another boost from the bicycle craze around the turn of the 20th Century. 

Still, it took Hollywood icons like Gloria Swanson, Gene Harlow, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, and Katherine Hepburn being photographed in slacks to begin to make pants acceptable on women.  They really took off during home front and uniformed services during World War II and became everyday fashion wear standard for by most women by the ’60s and ‘70s.

Despite widespread use and acceptance Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris each found out that their pants suits could still be used against her as a symbol of an aggressive, assertive, unfeminine, and dumpy women.

But arguably none of that might have come about without Amelia Bloomer’s earnest advocacy.

Bloomer in Council Bluff, Iowa--no longer wearing Bloomers but still a leading suffragist.

As for Bloomer herself, in 1853 she closed The Lily and moved with her husband and family to Ohio and then to Council Bluff, Iowa two years later.  She continued to contribute articles to the now growing feminist press, including Stanton’s and Susan B. Anthony’s The Revolution which bowed in 1868 and acknowledged Bloomer’s inspiration and example.  Bloomer would open and edit small publications in Iowa as well.

She dedicated herself to the struggle for women’s rights and suffrage and led campaigns in Nebraska and Iowa and served as president of the Iowa Woman Suffrage Association from 1871 until 1873.

When Anthony Met Stanton, is a life-sized bronze statue in Seneca Falls, depicting Amelia Bloomer (center) introducing Susan B. Anthony to Elizabeth Cady Stanton in May 1851. 

Bloomer died on December 30, 1894 in Council Bluffs.  Although honored at the time as a women’s rights pioneer, her contributions, except for her association with the Bloomer, have nearly been forgotten.  Bloomer House in Seneca Falls was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980 and since 2002 the American Library Association has produced Amelia Bloomer List annually in recognition of books with significant feminist content for young readers.

Perhaps most interestingly she is commemorated together with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Sojourner Truth, and Harriet Tubman in the Calendar of Saints of the Episcopal Church on July 20.  This, by the way, would come as a shock to Stanton, a notorious Free Thinker. 

Walking the Walk and Compassion for Campers Update for May 29, 2026

 Look for new opportunities for action, education, community, and solidarity in and around McHenry County here every week.  

                                                            Walking the Walk  

Pride Month up on us.  Celebrate as a critical part of Resistance.

Crystal Lake Pride Walk & Social  now sponsored by Crystal Lake Pride on Sunday, June 7 from 11 am-6 pm at Brink Street Market in Downtown Crystal Lakee.

Crystal Lake Pride Walk & Social  now sponsored by Crystal Lake Pride on Sunday, June 7 from 11 am-6 pm at Brink Street Market in Downtown Crystal Lakee.

Woodstock Pride Fest--June 13-14 Annual family-friendly events celebrating the LGBTQIA+ Community. Multiple special events.  Pride Parade and the Festival on the Square 11 am to 4 pm.

Ride/Walk to Leave a Light On--On and around Woodstock Square, Friday, June 19 7 pm.  Benefiting Break Crystal Lake Teen Center, Compassion for Campers, Community Connection for Youth, IMC--employment, education, health, and housing services, Jail Breakers, Lemonade & Advocate, Live4Lali, and Woodstock Pride.

Two Juneteenth celebrations:.

Honoring Legacy, Empowering the Future presented by McHenry County Now.  Thursday, June 18 at 5:30 pm at the Cary Public Library.  Register here.

The McHenry County Juneteenth Festival will be held on Saturday, June 20, from 3 to 5:30 pm on Woodstock Square Woodstock.

Compassion for Campers has been displaced by its former venue, Community Resource Days at Willow Crystal Lake.  We have been struggling since mid-May to find how, where, and when we can resume our services to our unhoused guests and friends.  Sue Rekenthaler and Chaplain Dave Becker of Tree of Life UU Congregation are leading discussions on how to move forward our mission.

The good news is that that in cooperation of Nada Lunsford, Executive Director of Steven's Home we have been able to schedule a Stopgap resource event this Friday, May 29 from 11:30 am to 2 pm in the Hilltop Picknick Pavilion in Woodstock's Emrickson Park.  This will be a lot like C4C's early events featuring a lunch, time to share and visit, and distribute our camping gear and other supplies laid out for our guests to choose from.  Meanwhile, Cahplain Dave is arranging a meeting of many congregations and ministries as well other organizations, and agencies to explore creative and cooperative ways to face our crisis We continue to search for other opportunities.  Look to this space for dates and locations.

C4C hopes to continue our service to the unhoused.  Until we find a new venue, we will not be able to accept material donations due to lack of storage space.  The best thing you can do is offer your critically needed financial support to get us through this emergency.  Money donations are always welcome at     https://tinyurl.com/3bz96axe.   Look for updates here.  Email compassionforcampers@treeoflifeuu.org .