As of today, February 3rd, I don’t know the particulars about Molly Ivins’ wake or funeral, only that they will be on the grand style of the Irish, no matter the particulars of one’s background.

Bigger than life was she, and bigger than life will be the celebration of her words that circled around Texas, and all states beyond.  Words connect, and hers connected like steel ropes, enveloping all who shared her anger, or like velvet ribbons when her tone softened before the weak, the confused, and the disheartened.

Molly Ivins Can’t Say That, Can She? was her first book, and she let fly her fearless disregard for political fat cats, as we learn from the blurb:

On George Bush: “Calling George Bush shallow is like calling a dwarf short.”

On Congress: “It is silly, vacillating, with no earthly idea what to do unless it has an opinion poll in front of it.”

The Chicago Tribune, not noted for its liberal bias, paid tribute to Molly on its February 1st editorial page:

For six years, the trenchant columns of Molly Ivins have raised Cain on the Commentary page of this newspaper... Her first Tribune column appeared March 1, 2001, and ripped the tax cut proposal of her fellow Texan, President George W. Bush. “Even the dimmest of us have got the point that it’s a tax cut for the very rich with a little sop thrown in for some of the rest of us,” she fumed.

Typical Ivins, shouting at the White House door, daring to be let in, with the needy and the new, poor middle class at her heels.

In her final column, written four weeks ago, The Tribune tells us, Ivins mustered sufficient energy to rant: “The president of the United States does not have the sense God gave a duck – so it’s up to us. You and me.”

She knew she was coming to the end, so she was drawing all of us faithful readers together, and telling us the future is ours to shape, to believe in the truth, which she saw so clearly, which we can see as clearly, if we but share her courage. The Tribune author speculates that there will be “quite a party” in Austin, because “Molly would want that and probably left instructions.”

Yes, of course, there will be a party. Whether alone or together, we, who laughed at her impish barbs, right on target, and were strengthened in knowing someone with smarts “was raising Cain” at the throne of the powerful, will raise a toast to her life as Samaritan to the little people on their individual roads to a personal Damascus.

Too soon, has she reached her destination, at age 62, silenced by breast cancer, diagnosed in 1999. In the intervening years, she never stopped observing, separating fact from fiction, ministering to her followers, as faithful to them as any bishop or rabbi or street preacher.

One writer has said, above all, she had courage. True, but beyond even courage, she possessed love. Love for her country, love for her people. How else can one explain the prodigious amount of print she produced, the lectures given, the charity funds she helped to raise, the friendships maintained during her roller-coaster life?

You may smile at my assertion that she reminds me of Azar Nafisi, professor at Johns Hopkins University, who taught English literature at the University of Tehran, and wrote the eloquent memoir, Reading Lolita in Iran. See what you think.

In the fall of 1995, after resigning from her academic post, Nafisi decided to indulge a long-held dream, and invited seven of her most committed students to her home every Thursday morning to discuss literature. They were all women, for to have invited men would have been too dangerous.

When reading The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Nafisi would half-teasingly, half-seriously, ask her students, “Which of you will finally betray me?”

One student responded: “You yourself told us that in the final analysis we are our own betrayers, playing Judas to our own Christ.”

Always, through her writing, Molly told us not to betray ourselves or our nation by sleep-walking through this dangerous time, as if, by inattention, we might escape the inevitable result of surrendering our power and liberty into the hands of greedy dictators, who send our youth to die abroad, to ensure ill-gotten wealth in the name of U.S. patriotism.

Nafisi tells us that for nearly two years the women came to her house every Thursday, and that she never got over the shock of seeing them enter, completely covered with mandatory veils and robes. Then, each one would put the outer garments aside and become her real self, in living color.

What if we, as a nation, put aside our robes that hide the deepest longings of our hearts for peace and truth, for compassion for our poor, respect for learning, and find the courage to stand up against the foes who would squash every effort for cultural and spiritual renewal?

The people did just that when they voted in November. And, according to Katharine Q. Seelye, in the February 1st issue of The New York Times, in her final column, almost with her final breath, Molly urged readers to “raise hell” against the war.

In her memory, friends, let us find the courage and strength to do just that.

To whom do we tell what happened on the
Earth, for whom do we place everywhere huge
Mirrors in the hope that they will be filled up
And will stay so.

Czeslaw Milosz, “Annalena”

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