Denise Noe: The Madwoman Speaks!

Published in the Bolivar Herald-Free Press April Fool’s Day: Glory and a Downside By Denise Noe          The precise origin of April Fool’s Day is unknown.   However, there are traditions in a variety of cultures that are believed to have provided models for it and out of which it may have grown.   Ancient festivals in which slaves or servants were allowed to boss around their masters and children pretended to switch places with parents are likely antecedents for April Fool’s Day. The earliest recorded mentions of “All Fool’s Day” date from the Middle Ages.   The Middle Ages is often thought of, and not without reason, as a grim period in European history.   It was a culture of rigid, birth-based hierarchies, of torture as an officially sanctioned punishment for many offenses, of death as a punishment for trivial ones, of widespread superstition, and the terrible slaughter caused by the bubonic plague. ...

Memorial Day and the special sacrifices made by men By Denise Noe Few holidays are as somber as Memorial Day. This day, which takes place on the last Monday in May, honors American soldiers killed in service to their country. It seems like a good day to remember the special sacrifices that our society, and every other, demands from men. While the Wikipedia states, “The holiday commemorate U.S. men and women who died in military service for their country,” the truth is that death in combat is anything but an equal opportunity disaster.   Memorial Day has its roots in efforts to honor those killed in America’s Civil War. On both sides, only men were drafted and only men knowingly sent into combat. There were a handful of women who fought but they had disguised themselves as men. (Their motives varied with some women so dedicated to either the Union or the Confederacy that they wanted to fight for it and others unable to bear separation from their husbands.) The ...

Published in the Spring 2015 issue of Breath & Shadow: A Journal of Disability Culture and Literature The Best Years of Our Lives : Shattering Glass, Shattering Disability Taboos By Denise Noe The Best Years of Our Lives is a 1946 black and white motion picture rightly regarded as a classic. William Wyler directed this film from a screenplay by Robert E. Sherwood based on a novel by MacKinlay Kantor. The movie won seven Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Film Editing and Best Adapted Screenplay. One actor, Harold Russell, won two Academy Awards for his performance in this film: an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor and a special honorary award “for bringing hope and courage to his fellow veterans.” By casting Russell, who had lost his hands and forearms in a military training accident, the film shattered a major cinematic taboo: he was the first physically disabled person ever cast in a major role. To this day, Ru...