The woman with the white hair in flowered turtleneck and jeans standing on the corner in front of the Occupy Sebastopol tent is quite aware of her relevance.

“I think it’s important that I’m here,” says Geneva Folsom who is 89 and knows she adds a respectable senior visual to the movement that some detractors would dismiss as scruffy, unfocused and played out. But even skeptics might take a second look at Geneva the Occupier, including the drivers who squeal past, curse and raise a middle finger.

For them she offers sympathy.  “They’re angry. Maybe they just received a foreclosure notice, have a sick family member, be bottomed out on their credit cards. They may be relying on the food bank so they don’t have to choose between prescriptions and a meal.”

Geneva is energized by the occupy movement. She first got encouraged by the Arab Spring protests and then came Occupy Wall Street. “And I finally saw the possibility of changing things in this country,” she says in a homey drawl that she defines as more Oklahoman than southern.

Her father worked for an oil company in Ponca City, Oklahoma. Her mother was a teacher. Her father was a Republican.  Her mother was not. Geneva says, “On election day she would walk out the door and tell my father, ‘Walter, I’m going to cancel your vote.’”

Geneva was a therapist, married to a psychiatrist. They lived mostly in the Deep South and while Geneva has known grander digs she is now happily snug in a downtown studio apartment. Her daughter and family live nearby. Her phone message tells solicitors,  “I’m old. I’m poor. And I never buy anything over the telephone.”

She’s proud of the occupy movement. “It’s only been a few months and it’s in everyone’s heads. Everyone knows what people mean by “the one percent” and “the 99 percent.” If you say occupy anything, people know what you mean.”

Occupy Sebastopol has had a pretty mellow presence, partly because it’s in liberal western Sonoma County. Partly too, Geneva says, “Because we’ve had no outside trouble makers and have worked closely with the police department.” As for the violence that has sprung from occupy actions elsewhere Geneva says, “When people have been thrown overboard their anger can get out of control.”

She quickly adds this is her personal opinion. She does not speak for the movement. However, she adds, “If I was running the show I’d figure out a way to occupy Congress and follow all the candidates.”

“Sometimes I think we have a stupid public.”

“I believe in revolution,” she says, “but I try to be polite.” Her style is to carry a placard that says “Tell Obama, the Congress, the banks and corporations we want economic opportunity.” She points to a report that 50 percent of Americans are a crisis away from falling below the poverty line.

“I’ve been waiting for a revolution for four years,” she says, since President Obama’s election. But she’s been on the side of change for a lifetime. The KKK once burned a cross on her front lawn “because they didn’t like that we were friends with black people.”

When her husband became a hospital director in Alabama the job came with a white house with pillars and a maid. Unaccustomed to both, Geneva asked what people in town paid their maids. And then she paid twice as much.

When elders in the local Methodist church invited the family to join, her husband said they would as soon as the church started welcoming black families.

Then and now Geneva says people have disappointed her. “Sometimes I think we have a stupid public.” But there is always reason to hope that people turn around. In her last email to me she wrote, “So happy to see the Girl Scouts are still in business in spite of them being terrorists.”

I think I get it. It’s a 50 year old grudge. They’re still mad about the Pill. The birth control pill turned the power game upside down more than 50 years ago and some people are still honked off about it.  Reliable woman-controlled contraception changed many things.  The Pill became forever linked to the sexual revolution, women’s liberation, cultural change, even consumer activism. All the things some people wish they could reverse.

As the Republican presidential campaign continues its jaw-dropping mission to control women’s bodies it’s clear that one way the hard right would take this country back is to drag women back a half century.

If you weren’t around to remember, ask your mother or grandmother what it was like after the Pill put women in charge of their bodies. They didn’t have to leave birth control up to the man who promised, “Trust me, I’ll take care of it.”

Not anymore. Women took control. Discreetly.  Your man didn’t need to know, or your mother, or the church.

A woman in charge of her future could plan her life, develop a career, start up a rock band, finish med school.  She could decide when or whether to have children. She could enjoy sex. For another pre-Pill reminder,  watch Mad Men.

In her book When Everything Changed, The History of American women from 1960 to the present, Gail Collins quotes the Economist magazine as crediting the Pill for being one invention that historians a thousand years from now will say defined the Twentieth Century.

In 2010 we celebrated the 50^th anniversary of the Pill, confident that reliable birth control was taken care of. Today’s young women could feel assured that reproductive choices were “like the air and water, simply there when you need them,” writes  Gloria Feldt in her book No Excuses, about women and power.

But apparently some weren’t celebrating, but brooding, waiting for their chance to pounce and show women who’s boss.

Our current attackers are not all crusty old guys, the fools who think sexist jokes are funny. Some are young enough to be Phyllis Schlafly’s grandsons.  But their message is the same – that women, the poor dears, are simply incapable of knowing what’s best for their bodies.

The feverish Rick Santorum would get rid of abortion, birth control, prenatal testing and amniocentesis. Who knows what he’ll go after next. Virginia legislators pushed by the governor tried to force women to have an intrusive vaginal ultrasound prior to an abortion. Against her will. Whether she wants it or not. Non-consensual penetration of the vagina or, at worst -  in the case of Virginia – state rape. At best, politicians wanting to play doctor.

Former Congresswoman Pat Schroeder said “If you had told me when I was in law school birth control would be a debate in 2012 I would have thought you were nuts.”

Fortunately women started talking back. In Virginia they organized a silent protest, staring down state legislators going to vote against women. And Gov. Vaginal Ultrasound backed off.  Activists in Ohio labeled their anti-women Republicans “masters of the Uterus.” Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney demanded “Where are the women?” and led a walkout to protest a male-only panel dealing with contraception.

What’s seldom mentioned is that the Pill not only prevents an unwanted pregnancy but helps protect against uterine and ovarian cancer. It’s used to control endometriosis. It lessens migraines. And in its early years it turned women into their own health advocates. Concerned about the side affects from the heavy estrogen dose women pressured manufacturers to adjust the dosage. And they did. And women realized they had power as consumers.

Well, all of this has just been too much for too long for some people, mostly men, I’m sorry to say. Powerful women are obviously a menace to society and must be stopped.

That is our challenge then, for modern women and men to resist these 19^th century throwbacks. If we don’t, we will leave a legacy for our grandchildren that will cause more pain and suffering than any whopping national debt.

At a themed dinner party we brought dishes based on our individual heritage which is why our gastronomical surprise included Sephardic meatballs, sauerkraut, chopped liver and Rhum Babka.   It’s such an American thing, to dredge up treasures from the Old World.

And that is why it’s perplexing when Republican presidential candidates who want to lead this country and represent it in the world, act like they couldn’t possibly have any ties or interest in anything beyond the good old USA.  One candidate chided another for speaking a second language. The other guy knows French he sneered, as if it were something to be ashamed of. Who could you possibly offend by speaking two languages?

That same candidate decries the entire Spanish language even though it happens to be the second largest language spoken in the United States. He calls it the language of the ghetto. The first immigrants on American soil spoke Spanish.  Spanish is the second most widely taught language in the United States…followed by French.

And then there’s the Europe-haters.  We finally got past that Freedom Fries nonsense and now there’s a whole new round of Europe-bashing. When they run out of ways to attack President Obama they accuse him of “taking his political inspiration from Europe.  Voters must choose between “a European-style welfare state” or “a free land,” says one contender.

Given that the U.S. was founded by people from Europe and the population swollen by Italians, Irish, Germans, Russians, Poles – you name it – this anti-European English-only rhetoric would seem to be turning on our own roots.

The Republican candidates hold to a blind belief that everything America does is best, that we have no need to look beyond our shores for any guidance or inspiration. We don’t need their language. We don’t need their ideas. We don’t need their health care plans and we’ll deal with carbon emissions our way.

We’re Francophobes, Hispanophobes, monolingual, mono-thinking and proud.

The issue comes close to home now because Santa Rosa (Ca.) is getting a French-American school. When I first read about it I thought it a bon-bon of an idea. I love going to France. I like that my granddaughter’s pre-ballet dance teacher counts out the tempo… un, deux trois.  I don’t think anyone  thinks her un-American for saying “bonjour” to a bunch of five-year-olds in pink tights.

And yet regarding the French American school there was criticism. French is charming, but Spanish is essential, seeing as how our population includes so many children whose first language is Spanish. What we really need in the North Bay are more schools with a Spanish-English curriculum.

I want my little white grandkids of mixed European ancestry whose mother tongue is American English and live in California and Texas to study Spanish. Know it. Use it. Put it on their resume. Learning to speak a second language will make them worldly. But learning Spanish will help them be local.

Might even help were they to run for president.  Que fastidio!  (Means good grief in Spanish. I had to look it up.)