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Radium Girls

from STARTHROWERS by Shannon Hawley

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about

My paternal great-grandmother worked in a watch and compass factory during the Great War. Many of the young women who painted the dials with radium got sick and died from poisoning. They had to fight a long 10 year battle in the courts to change rights for workers. Many of the women died. My great grandmother lived until she was 99 years old. When will we learn to take better care of one another?

lyrics

Busy in the backyard
Growing basil, pluck tomatoes from the vine
Simmer them soft
make the gravy, feed the family at dinnertime


When I was called to duty
I fell in happily with my brave sisters on the line
We painted so precisely the glowing dials on watches
How delicate the face of time


In a past life, we were radium girls
And our hair used to glow
From a different type of halo
With all the good men overseas
Silhouettes of smokestacks, girls in factories


We found the undark in the work
We tipped that brush onto our tongue
Ingested tiny drops of poison

Some of those girls painted their toes and fingernails
To make their nights, light up like the day
The brighter, the luminescence, the faster the decay

When I looked down the line
My sisters, disappearing, one by one, their bright faces gone
Their crumbling jaws exposing, the ugliness of war
How delicate the face of time

In a past life, we were radium girls
And our hair used to glow
From a different type of halo
With all the good men overseas
But the death toll rising here
Silhouettes of smokestacks and factories

Why did I survive and is the poison buried deep inside my family’s bones
And if I sing their sins
Will you turn it into medicine
Oh what will break the spell
I wanna know

In a past life we were radium girls
And our hair used to glow
From a different type of halo
With all the good men over seas
Silhouettes of smokestacks, ghosts in factories


We were the light in darker days
We tipped that brush onto our tongue
We tried to keep you all so safe from harm

credits

from STARTHROWERS, released March 24, 2023
Written by Shannon Hawley
Mixed and Produced by NekterGun

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Shannon Hawley New Jersey

Shannon Hawley is a singer-songwriter and healer.

Her album STARTHROWERS is a memoir in song paying homage to women and caretakers doing the invisible, often overlooked work of love. With a clear voice and deep New Jersey roots, Shannon alternates between the anthemic and the understated, across themes of grief and praise, our relationships to our history, the natural world, and to each other. ... more

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