The Eric Metaxas Show - Melanie Kirkpatrick

Episode Date: August 14, 2021

Melanie Kirkpatrick returns to the big show to share what she's discovered about Sarah Josepha Hale, the woman responsible for making Thanksgiving a national holiday.

Texas show with your host, Eric Mettaxas. Ladies and gentlemen, as promised, we keep yacking and yacking about food for the poor. You'd like to know, hey, hey, who runs that organization? Well, we tracked him down. He wasn't easy to find, but his name is Ed Raines, and he's right here. Ed, welcome the program. Thanks so much, Eric. Great to be on your show.

Of course, I'm lying. You were very easy to find. In fact, it was you who found me. But I want to ask you, Ed, how long have you been the head of, food for the poor because you're a fairly recent addition to this longstanding organization. Yeah, so I've been here almost four years, but as president, CEO, since the beginning of 2020. So where are you from originally, Ed? Well, I started off life growing up in London and came to college in the U.S. and never left.

You've got a little bit of that English accent there. Well, look, my audience already knows about food for the food. poor. But let's, for those who don't, who might be tuning in right now, I have to say, there are almost no organizations that we work with the way we do with you guys. CSI is the only one that's popping into my mind that people that we have vetted, not just we, the Air Comit Taxes Show, but the entire Salem Radio network from Mike Gallagher to the next mayor of California, Larry Elder, to Hugh Hewitt, to, to my my dear, dear friend Dennis Prager.

We believe in the work you're doing at Food for the Poor and the way that you do it, feeding the poorest of the poor in the world, Haiti, other places. So we really believe in you and periodically we partner with you. We're doing that with you this month, obviously. And so I want to say before we even get into the conversation, folks, you go to my website. It's the radio website, metaxistococ.com. you'll see the banner. All the exciting details are there. Ericmetaxis.com is my website.

Metaxistalkis talk.com is the radio website since we talk on the radio. And if you want to call the numbers 844-863 Hope, 844-863 Hope. So Ed Rain, tell us, what are we looking at right now? You've been the head of Food for the Poor since roughly this horrific pandemic messed with the world's economy and everything. So what's going on right now? Well, thanks, Eric. I mean, one of the things we have to say is that the COVID hit that we saw in the U.S. has been replicated in the 17 countries that we support around the Caribbean and Latin America.

And just as we saw, you know, the food crisis has been the number one problem. People suddenly finding themselves without work. And in many of the countries, the devaluation of their currencies is also ensured that they are faced with limited access to food and the food that they can find is at a greater cost. So their burden is greater than ever. And then, you know, we're in the business of sort of helping from a relief anyway. So you add in, you know, what we typically expect in a given year with the hurricanes and the flooding and so forth. So, you know, think about last year, had COVID going on and then those two hurricanes that slammed into Central America.

We were there to provide support. but it is, this is a moment in time where, you know, we are very concerned for the countries that we're supporting. Food is the number one problem. Well, it's hard, again, for America, there's always a challenge because we are so blessed in this nation. Even the poorest people in this nation have ways to get food. So the idea that there are people struggling who don't have the most basic medicine are dying for one of medicine that none of of us would ever think about having a problem getting. That's why you all are doing what you're doing. How many years has food for the poor been doing this kind of thing? Well, it's 39 years and you're quite right.

I mean, the medicines are a part of our program. We partner with organizations to provide us with medicines and medical supplies. And when you think about the plight of someone in extreme poverty, they have multiple needs. So we talk about, you know, all of those, whether it's food, it's access to water, it's shelter, housing. We built 85,000 homes through the generosity of donors over the 39 years in many of those countries, about nine of those countries. But all of these things press upon the problems of poverty. And so trying to be able to provide sort of a full array of solutions for those people is imperative. We always start with food. That's why food for the poor. That's how we began. But we very quickly realized that a full array of solutions was required. You know, imagine what it's like if you absolutely have nothing. I mean, we talk about, you know, relative poverty

within the U.S., and there are many services that help those in extreme need here in this country, but that safety net just is not present in the countries we're talking about. So, you know, if somebody doesn't act on their behalf, nothing's going to happen. It's an amazing thing because in this country, in the United States, we have the luxury of arguing which is better. The public sector or the private sector. Should government be doing this? Should private individuals be doing this? It's almost comical that we argue about how to get it done. And there are countries where it's not even a thought that the government would get it done. The governments tend to be tremendously corrupt. They couldn't care less about the poor and their misery. They don't have a Christian worldview.

In America, even pagans have a Christian worldview when it comes to the poor. They don't know where it came from, but of course it comes out of the Bible, caring for those who can't care for themselves, feeding those who are hungry, basic ideas for centuries. And in countries like Haiti, as you describe and others, the governments are so broken down. There's a kind of anarchy and a misery, and it would be wonderful if we can come in there and revive the entire nation, but we can't do that. But the people are there, they are suffering, and what we can do is what food for the poor does. So it's just a beautiful thing. Tell us also, I mean, I know I keep telling my audience that for $11, you feed somebody, you would feed three kids for six months. That's how you leverage the American

dollars, which is nothing less than astonishing. I mean, when somebody thinks of $11, it's nothing to an American, and then you think it can feed three starving kids for six months. So how is it that food for the poor can do those types of things? Well, there's several reasons. When you think about how we're set up. We have extensive logistics and distribution capability. That's how we get the relief for the containers. It's usually about 4,000 containers a year get set out to these countries. And the most important part of the equation is how we use the churches in these countries.

So it is really our sort of secret source, if you want to say it that way. Our Christian ministry here works through those churches, all denominations, and we're able to distribute through those churches. Of course, the church isn't charging us a fee to do this. And that's getting to more people through that network. I mean, in Haiti alone, we probably have 3,000 outlets for the distribution that we start off in our two warehouses. They go to 14 distribution centers, and those distribution centers are typically in large churches

and then for further redistribution. it's an incredible network. You have to have that network in place to make a difference. Well, see, this is what I keep trying to say. We're just going to keep you for another minute here. But I just want to say that this is the key. This is why we and all the other Salem radio partners work with food for the pool because you all have this infrastructure and the relationships with churches.

That is the key to everything. You're able to leverage our few dollars dramatically. and I know this. I've heard about this before. I've looked into this before. So when people think, well, what can I do? Well, folks, whatever you give to food for the poor, it is dramatically magnified. I want to say again, please go to our website.

It's metaxis talk.com. You'll see the banner. It gives you all the details there. And I also want to say to anybody who's listening, anybody crazy enough to want to have dinner with me, Eric Metaxus, for a $10,000 gift to food for the poor. and many of you have done it in the past. I'm asking you to do it again, please. I'd be delighted to meet you in a city of our mutual convenience, have dinner with you. We can include whomever you like. A thousand dollars gift, you can have a visit to the studio with your whole family or anyone you're like. Or if you hate New York, you can find friends in New York

and say, hey, you go in our place. Whatever works for you, we've got a number of other things, grand prizes. We want to bless you and encourage you. It is a remarkable opportunity that God gives us to use what he has blessed us with to bless others and Food for the Poor and Ed Rain. I just want to say thank you for allowing us to participate with you in doing God's work. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having us on your show. Hey there, parents. Have you been as frustrated as I've been with the messages our kids are being taught today in schools

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We get to have some fun. Isn't that nice? We get to talk to our friend Melanie Kirkpatrick, who just wrote a book, I just the title, Lady Editor, a biography of Sarah Josepha Hale. Melanie, this is a fun book.

Tell us about it. Great to be with you again, Alvin. Excuse me, Eric. The last time we spoke, it was about Thanksgiving. And this is how I learned about Sarah Josepha Hale, who's known as the godmother of Thanksgiving. It was she who persuaded Lincoln in the middle of the Civil War to issue the first proclamation for a national Thanksgiving. So I got interested in her. And she was a celebrity in the 19th century, but she's virtually unknown in the 21st century. She was

an author. She was the editor of the most popular magazine of the pre-Civil War period, Goody's Ladies' book. She was a champion of rights for women, and she was a cultural unifier. She believed that America had been unified politically, but not culturally. And she set out to change that through the work of her magazine. That's an amazing point. I want to talk to you about that. in a moment, but I want to just keep hitting it here. You were with the Wall Street Journal. You're with the Hudson Institute. And we did talk to you about Thanksgiving.

But this woman, as you said, she was a major figure in the 19th century, gigantic name, but virtually forgotten, really. I mean, whoever talks about Sarah Josie Pahale. So just tell us about her, generally speaking, more about her life, because she is a hugely influential figure. It's hard for us to imagine how influential she was. I think she's one of the most influential women, if not the most influential woman in our history.

She grew up in a little town in New Hampshire. She was born in 1788. She was really a woman of the 18th century. And when her husband died, she was in her 30s with four children. The oldest was seven. and a fifth on the way. She had to figure out a way to support herself. She liked to write.

Her husband had told her she was good at it. So she got the Masons, the Freemasons. Her husband had been a Freemason. And she started to write, and the Freemasons published her first book, a book of poetry. Then she wrote a novel, an anti-slavery novel, decades before Uncle Tom's cabin. that caught the attention. It did well, and it caught the attention of an Episcopal priest in Boston who was starting a magazine for women, and he invited her to come there, was called the Ladies Magazine, and be the first editor. She did, and she turned it into a big success, so much so

that Lewis Goody, a publishing magnet in Philadelphia, decided he wanted. He wanted. her, his editor of his book called his magazine called The Ladies Book. And she wanted to stay in Boston where her oldest son was in college at Harvard. But so what did Mr. Gote do? He bought her magazine so that he could get her. And that was the beginning of a beautiful partnership that lasted until the, I think it was 1877. So for 50 years, until she was almost 90, Hale was this towering figure in American journalism. And her subjects, her passion was education for women. She began her career at a time when only half of American women were even literate.

And there was no college that accepted women. And teaching was considered a man's profession. There were no women doctors, of course. And married women had no property. rights. That is, the second they got married, anything they earned, anything they inherited, went to their husbands to run. So Hale used her magazines to fight for rights for women. At a time, I must say, this was 20 years ago when she started before the Women's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York.

I think the women's rights advocates who followed, even those in the 20th century and today stand on Hale's shoulders, because without education, without education, women would have not gotten very far. And she, through her advocacy, really, and the power of her pen, was able to change the national conversation about why women should be educated. Was she a woman of any particular faith? She was. She started out as a congregationalist, of course, because that's what people were in the little town in New Hampshire, where she was born in the 18th century. And she was a very faithful Christian. When she got to Philadelphia, however, in the 30s to run the ladies' book, there weren't any congregational churches. So she joined the Episcopal Church. Unclear why. But. She was a member of a very famous Episcopal Church on Writtenhouse Square called the Church of the Holy Trinity. Philip Brooks was the priest there for a while, the rector there for a while. You can see her faith in her writing. She wrote a book about women of the Bible.

That was one of her many books. But in her writing, no, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, read the Bible. So I would be reading something that Hale wrote. And I would think, hmm, that sounds familiar. And so I Google it. And it would usually, it would often be something from the Bible. I'll give you one example. During the Civil War, she wrote about her magazine being a lodge in the wilderness for her readers. And the phrase sounded familiar. So I googled it. And it was from Psalm 5th.5. So that's not unusual. I guess for a writer of the pre-Civil War period to be so versed in the Bible, but she was.

Another unusual if they weren't versed in the Bible. Yeah, yeah, that's probably right. I'm just thinking of the 19th century, it's just so fascinating again to think that Sarah Josipa Hale, hugely influential to the point where all of our lives have been affected by her and her writing and we don't know about her. So I'm thrilled that you've written about her. Were you surprised that there were so little known about her or that somebody hadn't written a biography of her more recently? Surprised and disappointed, I guess, Eric. I think there are a couple of reasons for it.

One is that after she left as editress of a Goody's lady's book, the magazine turned kind of trivial. So for the last 20 years before it disbanded at the end of the 19th century, It wasn't the magazine that had been under her leadership. So maybe I think her reputation suffered as a result of that. But perhaps more important, although she was a champion of the rights for women that I mentioned, she did not believe women should get the vote. She was anti-suffrage, like a majority of women in the middle of the 19th century,

I hasten to add. And I think that probably disqualified her. from consideration by a lot of the women that followed. That is very interesting. Suffrage became issue. Right. Similarly, when we talk about Susan B. Anthony, she was very much against abortion. So it's interesting how things change and how certain people are lionized and others are

forgotten. I love the idea that you said that she was interested in culturally unifying the United States. Talk about that. I'm just amazed by that. Well, when she started her, she announced that she, in 1828, she announced that she was going to publish American authors writing on American themes and American subjects. Now, from our perspective, this seems obvious. Of course, Americans want to read American writers on American topics. But back then, this was a radical idea because magazines usually cut and pasted articles from British magazines or American newspapers.

or whatever. So, and she had the backing of the publisher and then later of Lewis Goody to do this. So she, she was, she was a really good literary scout and she found some authors whose work she published repeatedly. One was Edgar Allan Poe, whom her son had met when Poe was briefly at West Point in the 1820s. And she called, she thought he was, uh, had a lot of potential. Another was Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose work she published. And then she discovered a lot of women writers. And women whose names are not necessarily well known today,

but they're part of the Renaissance of female writers that took place in that period, including Harriet Beatrice or Stowe, I should add. I want to come back to the conversation. We're going to go to a break. Folks, the book is called Lady Editor, and we'll continue the conversation. Stick her around. I'm talking to Melanie Kirkpatrick, who has written a book called Lady Editor about the tremendously influential but mostly forgotten Sarah Josepha Hale.

She lived to be 90, you said, Melanie. So she had a long period of influence. Is she most famous for bringing Thanksgiving into the. the cultural center? Yes, I think that's exactly right. But she is also famous for writing Mary Little, Mary had a little lamb. Surprise to me when I learned that. I thought Mother Goose had written it, but Sarah Hale had written it. I mean, that's amazing. She wrote Mary had a little lamb. We all of us think of it as, you know, something that was in Mother Goose. But she wrote this. When did she write? And why did she write it? She wrote it in 1830. And,

she wrote a lot of children's books. And for a couple of years, she was editor of a juvenile miscellany, which was a popular children's magazine of the period. And nobody remembers this anymore, but Mary had a little, we just remember the first verse of Mary had a little lamb, but the third verse had a moral in it. And Mrs. Hale believed that her children's work should carry morals. And the moral of Mary had a little lamb is to be kind of. to animals.

So moving on, moving on to thanks. Follow her to school one day. It was against the rules. It made the children laugh and play. To see a lamb at school. To see a lamb at school. I'm just amazed by that. So tell us about Thanksgiving.

Because you and I talked about this in a previous show a couple of years ago, but tell us about how she brought Thanksgiving. We all kind of think, oh, it goes all the way back to 1621. And yet, not really. It was forgotten. Yeah. Well, Thanksgiving's in the late 18th and early 19th century were the decision of individual governors.

And governors didn't coordinate. So you could have a Thanksgiving, you know, from between September and December. There was an old saying that if you planned your itinerary carefully enough, you could have a good Thanksgiving dinner between Election Day and Christmas every week. So she thought that Thanksgiving was, oh, she kind of reinvented it into a quasi-patriotic holiday. She thought it was a quintessentially American idea to gather to give thanks once a year. And she thought that if Americans would gather together on the same day that maybe civil war could be prevented, And the closer it got to 1860, the more insistent she got about this. She wrote about Thanksgiving starting in, well, the novel I mentioned earlier before she became editor,

there's a wonderful description of Thanksgiving dinner that sounds just like the Thanksgiving dinner. We all celebrate every November with the turkey and pumpkin pies and stuff. But then in the 1840, she began to call for a national thanks. and as I say, for the purpose of bringing Americans together, she also thought, she said that she wanted it to be that wherever Americans gathered on Thanksgiving Day, they would celebrate and think about each other and the blessings of their country. It's amazing for most of us to think that there was a time when Thanksgiving was not what it is today. So we have her to thank for that. So when we talk about cold

cultural unity. What else did she do to promote cultural unity and why? Was it strictly because she wanted to prevent civil war? What was her different reason? No, no. She thought that America had been unified politically by the revolutionary war, but that we were not a unified country. And if we were going to succeed as a nation, we had to be culturally unified as well. I mentioned her interest in finding American literary talent. But she also was a She also helped to develop a cultural aesthetic. That is, she was kind of like the Martha Stewart of her day in that respect, writing and publishing articles about cultural things like manners and child rearing and recipes.

She was the first person to introduce a recipe section to a publication, if you can believe that. That's pretty huge there. We kind of take that for granted. Was this the first, quote unquote, women's magazine, the one that she edited? It was the first successful women's magazine. There had been a few before her, but they hadn't lasted very long. Sarah Josepha Hale. She wasn't related to Edward Everett Hale.

No, she was not. Or Nathan Hale? No, not Nathan Hale, but they were from similar backgrounds. He was from Vermont, I think. She was from New Hampshire. Mrs. Hale's family fought in the Revolutionary War, and she grew up hearing tales of those courageous deeds. That was part of him.

He was from Connecticut, but I mean, Hale's a pretty common name. You were talking about, again, this idea of her wanting to promote American cultural unity by publishing American authors. Did she publish Henry Wadsworth Longfell? for example? She did. She did. And she published Longfellow, and she also engaged in correspondence with him that was kind of interesting, talking about placement of his article, which it was kind of fun. She was editor of a gift book and was persuading him to write an article for the gift book and promised him it would be the lead poem. And then it turned out it was not the first poem. So, she wrote to apologize for that. Unbelievable. We'll be right back, folks.

We're talking to the author of Lady Editor, a new biography of Sarah Josipa, Hale. Don't go away. There's a dark of the moon on the 6th of June and a Kenworth, Holland logs. Cab over Pete with a reefer on and a Jimmy hauling hugs. We is heading for bear on I-10,

about a mile out of shaky town. Folks, I'm talking to the author of a new biography. Sarah Josepha Hale is the subject. The title of the book is Lady Editor. Melanie Kirkpatrick is my guest and the author. So tell us more about Sarah Josepha Hale. Hale was a believer that women had a higher moral character than men, which is kind of interesting.

And that was the reason she didn't want them to vote. She thought that they should advise the men and their family from a principled higher level. But she did have a lot of, she very much supported the idea of women as professionals, as teachers, as doctors, and other professionals and other jobs as well. She encouraged the government to hire women after the Civil War, pointing out that there were lots of widows and women. needed to support their families. But the one area that I'd like to mention where she, I don't think she did succeed, was she tried to professionalize the idea of women's work in the home. She wrote a book called The Good Housekeeper, which, again, the point was to elevate the status of women who chose to be wives and mothers. I think there's something we could learn from that. We

still haven't quite reached the point where our society gives women who work at home the same kind of respect that they deserve. Well, that's putting it mildly. It's interesting how, you know, when we talk about feminism and the women's movement, how complicated it is and how it's changed. Because you're right, in the 19th century, you have folks like this who they're against women getting the vote. We assume that people who are part of any women's movement would be for the vote for women. But this issue also, how strange it is that this woman in the 19th century is trying to elevate the role of a woman in the home, which is, I mean, anybody who has seen the influence that a mother and a wife can have in a home, in the institution,

of the home. It's an astonishingly important role. Feminists in the last 50 or so years have largely denigrated that. What did she have to say about this issue? She said that raising children was the most important role a woman would have in life. And that there was a quote about woman being the first school teacher of a child. And she also created the idea, the phrase home economics, I believe it was, which she tried to professionalize the idea of housekeeping and taking care of children. She thought women needed to be educated in how to train their kids, how to run a home, and of course, take care of them health-wise, too. And at the same time, she thought that women out in the professional world deserved respect.

And one way, feminists would hate this, but one way she thought that it would add to the respect of women in the professional world was to use feminine names for their jobs. So, for example, she wanted female doctors to be called doctoress and female lawyers to be called lawyeress and even female teachers. She advocated for the use of the word teacheress. And now, of course, many people in our century want to get rid of all those words that identify people by gender saying that it's unfair to women. She says just the opposite, that it's, you know, opposite, that it adds to their dignity. So that's another big difference between her and feminists today. So what's the last time somebody wrote about Sarah Josie Pahel? Is it safe to say that no one has written a biography about her in our lifetimes? She had a large role in a book on

Thanksgiving that came out last year. But the last time a full biography came out was, well, the best biography, the most complete biography, was written in the 18, in the 1920s, early 30s, and there have been academic studies since then. But I think mine is the first full biography, and I aim it to a general audience. I, you know, without giving myself too much credit here, I'll say I think it's a very readable, a very engaging book because of my subject. She was so fascinating. I say the same thing about my own biographies, I think it's a laudable ambition to write a book that people want to read that's entertaining. And so I want to say it's one of the reasons that I enjoy having you on the program because an academic approaches things extremely differently, a popular writer.

And they often have either some ideological acts to grind or they have all kinds of, let's say, fears about saying things that they shouldn't. And so it's a completely different kind of book. And I think that she's such a central figure. I was just excited to know that you wrote about her. You said she lived to be 90. Tell us about the end of her life. What was she doing at the end of her life? Well, she worked until she was 89. So she died about 16 months after she retired. And she was very active till the end of her life. Her mind was strong, right till the end. The last act of her working life was to write a letter to someone explaining why she was the true author of Mary had a little lamb, which I thought was amusing. And at the time of her

death, Eric, it was interesting to look at the obituaries. They were so adulating. She was just so revered such a celebrity. And in that regard, I didn't mention earlier, and I should have, which is that she corresponded with presidents of the United States. And they wrote back amazingly. It's sort of hard to imagine today. But she was that big a figure. Yeah, she was a huge celebrity. There's just no question about it. Did her kids go on to do anything notable? We've just got 20 seconds, but let's end there. Her kids all did well. She was able to educate them well.

One went to West Point and sadly died fighting in the Great Lakes region. But they all became highly educated and very successful. Folks, the book is called Lady Editor about Sarah Josie for Hale. Melanie, thank you so much. Great cute. Great to be here. Thank you, Eric. I promised to play a clip from Marcus Frisch.

Just to give the context, folks, every year we do a fundraiser for Food for the Poor. Why? Because we all know that we've got to give back. We all know that there's something we can do, but what? Where do we give? So food for the poor is one of a number of organizations that we partner with because they've been vetted. We have a history with them. We know how they work and we know how far they can stretch your dollar.

So if you give $37 to food for the poor, one kid can be fed for six months for $37, folks. That's astonishing. I hope you're astonished. But anyway, what I wanted to say that we haven't said, because this is tough stuff, it says that children under five years old in Honduras, that's one of the places where we're giving to right now, It says that chronic malnourishment causes over 25% of these kids under five years to be stunted in their early growth. So we are talking about serious effects, serious effects. Can you imagine that in our hemisphere, not many miles from America, we have this going on.

So this is, Food for the Poor is tackling early childhood hunger. That's what we're asking you to give to. $37 feeds a kid for six months. Obviously $111 blesses three kids. This is a real tragedy, but it's something we can do. And it's up to us actually to do it. I'll give you the phone number in just a minute. But I want to say that Marcus Frisch is a project manager at Food for the Poor.

We had a clip. I wanted to play that so we can hear from him. Let's play that. These families are in need. We've heard how people who have. have never found themselves in a position of begging are now asking for assistance. And if that is happening for the middle class in these countries, you can only imagine the impact that's happening for the poorest.

It's amazing. I mean, people like Marcus Frisch and others, they see these kids. And if you go to places like this and you see these kids and then it hits you that $37 could feed that kid for six months. wow so I'm just hoping that your heartstrings are being tugged down a little bit because frankly this is real this is happening and we on this program have made a commitment to food for the poor to reach out to you on their behalf or on behalf of these kids there's a phone number I'll give you the phone number 844-863 hope if you prefer the phone [phone] hope

844-863 hope, or to translate that into numerics, 844-8663-4-6-7-3, or you go to Metaxistalk.com. If somebody out there could step up and donate $1,000 to food for the poor, that would feed, think of this, 27 kids for six months. 27 kids for six months. It's just crazy, $1,000, which to some people is nothing. And obviously we keep saying that if you give $10,000, we would love to have dinner with you at a place of your choosing with as many people as you like. It's on you. So you can invite 20 people or just the two or three of us or whatever it is.

Make it a party. Yep. Yeah. We can do it here in New York where I live or we can do it in your town if I travel to your town. But honestly, I know there are folks out there who can do that. It's tax deductible. Obviously, that would be. 270 children for $10,000.

$270 children are fed for a half a year. That's amazing, ladies and gentlemen. I want you to take advantage of it. Go to metaxis talk.com. You'll see the banner or call 844-863 Hope. 844-863 Hope. We really do need your help. Thank you.