Carrie Nation, Kindly Lady

I had thought of Carrie Nation, the famous saloon smasher, as a stern, humorless person, insofar as I thought of her at all. It seems, though, that she wasn’t like that at all, and according to an article in Slate, she sheltered battered women long before women’s shelters were a regular thing. I still don’t think that Prohibition was a good idea - people who wanted to drink got their booze from Al Capone instead of from a tolerably ethical distiller or saloonkeeper, but one can understand Mrs. Nation’s actions under the circumstances, and she seems to have been decent, caring, and also exceptionally courageous.

As a bonus, the psychological blather that has been written about her adds to my skepticism about Freud and similar blatherskites.