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.)

The used book store in my town closed last week because the landlord raised the rent. At the last day half-price sale I picked up a Charles Dickens’ which seemed fitting in the soon-to-be orphaned space.

Books were off the shelves. Shelves off the walls. Unsold books were piled on makeshift plywood carts, no longer aligned in elegant alphabetical order. The staff offered cider and tried to be upbeat but I kind of felt like a fringe relative picking through the remains of the empty family home.

Too dramatic? Maybe. But how else can you react when a book store disappears?  The used book store was a fixture on Main Street.  A destination bookstore for fans from out of the area, a rainy day stop for locals and a fitting shelter for your own old books when it was their time to move on.

The staff said the old book business will be folded into another store in a nearby town but they hope to one day return.  Yeah, we know what happens when a good old friend packs up.

Meanwhile, just around the corner the town library closed. For remodeling, said the sign. The librarians promise it will be more jumping than ever when it re-opens. The same library reduced its schedule last year. Regulars get nervous when a library cuts hours, thins staff and puts up a closed sign, if only for three months.

I’m not going to blame any of this on my friends who’ve gone over to the dark side. Kindles, Nooks and e-readers are clearly here to stay and I’ve tried to stop grousing about them, saving my curled lip for landlords who raise the rent in a recession.

Over Christmas I was in a bookstore line when the man behind me held up State of Wonder by Ann Patchett and asked if I knew the book. I said I was waiting for the paperback. He was buying it for his wife, he said, adding that she had breast cancer and loved women authors. Who else would I recommend? I said our book club is wild for Alice Munro. He excused himself and disappeared into the M section.

Ann Patchett has opened up her own independent book store in Nashville. She said she has no interest in living in a city without a bookstore. And who would?Although the used book emporium is gone from our town the independent bookstore with new books thankfully hangs in there.

Last winter in Truckee my daughter and granddaughter and I trudged through a mountain blizzard to a small book store, warm and smelling of hot chocolate. I found an Edith Wharton, my daughter a Bill Bryson and my granddaughter a picture book. Is there a comparable Kindle moment?

If everyone was to eventually give up hard copy books and go electronic our towns would lose their literary center. And what would become of the books themselves?

We have six bookcases in our small two bedroom house. When they fill up and we need to purge we take our books to the hospice thrift store. Or give them to the library for their book sale. Or take them to the late great used book store downtown.

Knowing your books will find a good new home makes it easier to give them up. It would be a sin to throw a book in the trash or put it into a recycling bin. To do so would surely call forth the ghosts of the greats. Emily Dickinson might haunt you, as well she should, and I imagine she can be pretty snappish.