The Magdalen Laundries and interesting art installation

Well, I finally saw "The Magdalene Sisters" today with Jesse and it was really powerful. If you're not familiar with this shameful chapter in world/Irish history vis-a-vis women, here's a brief snip of a well-considered review (and the answer to each of the questions posed in the snip is "yes"):

(snip)

• Did the Magdalene asylums, originally established inthe nineteenth century by the Sisters of Mercy as spiritual refuges for prostitutes and other women penitents, go on to hold girls and even grown women against their will, for disgraces ranging from extramarital pregnancy to mere flirting or even having been raped?
• Did some women grow old and die working in the infamous Magdalene laundries, not necessarily out of personal conviction or desire for a vocation to lifelong penance, but more or less because the doors were locked?
• Were girls brutally beaten for inadvertent or minor offenses, stripped naked and mocked by sadistic nuns over the sizes of their various body parts, abused in other ways?

(end snip - read the whole article here - granted, the site has an agenda but the article makes valid points, nonetheless: )

In the course of re-reading up on the topic, I stumbled across a touching site in memory of the women- created by a Magdalen daughter who herself had a daughter while in her senior year and gave her up for adoption. The page includes a song Joni Mitchell wrote to memorialize the Magdalenes - interesting in that she gave up a daughter at the start of her career that she only reunited with in recent years.

The woman's specific acccount of finding first her daughter and then her mother is here. Those who know my family background with 2 full siblings, 2 half-siblings I've met, one "lost"half-sibling, and 8 step-siblings understand some of what engages me in these types of stories . . . but I'm always captured by folks' family histories.

A link on that site took me to artist Diane Fenster's recent installation in San Francisco. Quite interesting - images on sheets that trail into washtubs (the accompanying music for the installation is available in other links on the website).

Anyhow, that's how I've spent a good part of my evening . . . that, and knitting (yes! I've finally learned how to knit - a different post to come - and thanks, Sarah!) and holiday decorating. I suppose I should go to sleep now . . . work in the morning.