Showing posts with label Women's History. Show all posts

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Women's History Month - A Ramble (RePost)

When I started working on women's history about thirty years ago, the field did not exist. People didn't think that women had a history worth knowing.

—Gerda Lerner, Women and History (1986; 1993)

Read more: History of Women's History Month http://www.infoplease.com/spot/womensintro1.html#ixzz1HqPmouV1

This is Women's History Month

The other day I got to thinking about the Equal Rights Amendment. I did not know that it was originally written by Alice Paul in 1923 and that it is still waiting for three states to ratify it to make it a part of the Constitution. The 15 states that have not ratified the Amendment are: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah, and Virginia.

I suppose I got to thinking about it because I watched a movie in which a woman was thrown in jail for not reveling her source for a news article and they tossed her in jail for contempt of court. I watched the way she was treated. I was also reminded of a movie I watched about the struggle that women had in order to get the vote. (They didn't get it until 1920) They had rocks thrown at them and were spat upon and had to hide their involvement with the movement from husbands who could take their parental rights away from them. The struggle continues.

"Issues commonly associated with notions of women's rights include, though are not limited to, the right: to bodily integrity and autonomy; to vote (suffrage); to hold public office; to work; to fair wages or equal pay; to own property; to education; to serve in the military or be conscripted; to enter into legal contracts; and to have marital, parental and religious rights".

Many of these "rights" are just basic to what should be. There should be no question and probably would not be if the ERA had been passed. Women today can vote and hold public office. They can work but not always to fair wages of equal pay. They can own property and many are well educated. They serve in the military and enter into legal contracts.

Men still sometimes think of women as their property and right now we are seeing a spate of laws which show that they do not have the right to bodily integrity with anti abortion laws springing up hither and yon as part of the Tea Party Tsunami which is sweeping the nation. I am not saying whether or not I am in favor of abortion but I am saying that as a male it is none of my business.

And things are worse elsewhere in the world. In some country baby girls are not wanted and female infanticide is practiced. As is female circumcision, a practice which has no health value and is condemned by the World Health Organization.

It seems to me that women are still second class citizens and until things change we need to keep speaking out about the wrongness of these practices.

The treatment of women as chattel is so strongly enrolled in our cultures that it will be difficult to change things. We must recognize the root causes and strip away the hypocrisy of the male. Men could not be sure that a child was theirs without strictly controlling the women. Total control and that meant women became property.

In some countries women are forced to wear clothing which will hide their bodies. The burqa which the woman on the right is wearing is declining in use but it is still required in some places (particularly in Afghanistan) -

When I was in Egypt I was invited to a wedding party. We were told that the husband and father entered into a contract and the woman was transferred from the father to the husband.. sometimes she had never even met the man her parents had chosen for her to marry. She was invited to the party afterward. (If you Google Muslim Marriage it will not tell you this.)

Elizabeth Kaeton had this to say about marriage on her Blog, Telling Secrets:
(used with permission)

Let's face it, "traditional marriage" is a legal contract between two men wherein the woman is the subject of the legal agreement. That's why the father of the bride walks the bride down the aisle and "gives her hand inmarriage" to the groom.

She's property, is all. The church has been complicit in this legal transaction since the fourth century.

I once went to a wedding in a fundamentalist Christian Church for one of my former students. I was appalled to hear that the wedding was going to be a success because _____________was such a servant. A servant? Is that what a wife is supposed to be? Not in my book, but then I have never been married and I am not used to being waited on.

I guess the point of all this is that I really don't like the way women are treated in much of our world. I remember in the 80's when I read in our Social Studies book that there were "even 5 women in the House of Representatives" I used that as a math lesson and asked the kids how many women should be in the House if the structure of the House of Representatives was really representative? I asked them what was the percentage of women in our world. They figured about half. I let them know that it was about 52% and we figured out there should probably be a couple of hundred or more women in the House if we were truly representative. I am still waiting for one of my kids to run for office.

Men (not all but many) treat women with disrespect. I have known women who were not allowed to write checks or have any part of the business of the family. To be fair I also know some women who have the entire running of the household and the husband turns over all responsibility for paying bills, etc to her. But I knew some women who when suddenly widowed had to take a crash course in money management.

I have a great respect for women. I have seen them in charge of business, my representative in the Iowa House is a woman and she is one of the best I have ever seen. Hard working, intelligent and very capable. (And she doesn't seem to have the same problem with power that men have. She is a great representative.) I have had women principals and administrators (some good one bad) in my career. Things are changing but sometimes too slowly and it needs to be fair all the way around.

I was very proud of this Pakistani woman who spoke up for herself and her rights and the dual treatment she was receiving from this Mullah. I think she came out on top. More women need to take a stand for their rights and not to let men steamroll them.

I am in favor of the Equal Rights Amendment which simply states:

THE EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT

Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.
Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.

If and when it is ratified it will help all people men and women by placing in the law of the land the fairness which Abigale Adams requested when she wrote to John:

"In the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would Remember the Ladies," she wrote, "and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors."

The article that I got that quote from was from the government site. It was followed by this:

Her plea was the first call for the equality that American women would gradually achieve.

To which I would say - Not yet, Not yet, we are still working for it.

{Note - You may wonder why I am so much in favor of Equal Rights. Well you see my mother and father were divorced when I was 4 years old and my mother had to raise me without his help. She did have help from her parents but without that it would have been pretty tight.

I can still remember seeing a little girl in the optometrist's being told by her mother that they would have to wait until they could check with her father before she could get the glasses she needed. I remembered back to when I got my first set of glasses and I went from having to squint to see the chalkboard to seeing individual leaves on a tree across the street. -

My mother was smarter than many she worked with and yet she received less money. She was treated with disrespect by some of her bosses who had an ego problem.

The unequal treatment of any part of our society isn't fair and until we have this law it is
going to stay that way.)

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Watch This

Alfre Woodard reads "Ain't I a Woman?", a speech delivered by abolitionist Sojourner Truth at the Women's Convention in 1851. Part of a reading from Voices of a People's History of the United States (Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove,)February 1, 2007 at All Saints Church in Pasadena, CA. WE end Black History Month and begin Women's History Month with a powerful reading by Alfre Woodard. It gave me chills to watch it.

Monday, March 28, 2011

Women's History Month - A Ramble

When I started working on women's history about thirty years ago, the field did not exist. People didn't think that women had a history worth knowing.

—Gerda Lerner, Women and History (1986; 1993)

"Issues commonly associated with notions of women's rights include, though are not limited to, the right: to bodily integrity and autonomy; to vote (suffrage); to hold public office; to work; to fair wages or equal pay; to own property; to education; to serve in the military or be conscripted; to enter into legal contracts; and to have marital, parental and religious rights".

Let's face it, "traditional marriage" is a legal contract between two men wherein the woman is the subject of the legal agreement. That's why the father of the bride walks the bride down the aisle and "gives her hand inmarriage" to the groom.

She's property, is all. The church has been complicit in this legal transaction since the fourth century.

I am in favor of the Equal Rights Amendment which simply states:

THE EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT

If and when it is ratified it will help all people men and women by placing in the law of the land the fairness which Abigale Adams requested when she wrote to John:

"In the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would Remember the Ladies," she wrote, "and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors."

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

International Women's Day - March 8, 2011

International Women’s Day 2011: Time to Make the Promise of Equality a Reality
Posted on March 7 2011 | Executive Director | Statements
Message from UN Women Executive Director Michelle Bachelet on the occasion ofInternational Women’s Day, 8 March 2011.

A hundred years ago today, women across the world took an historic step on the long road to equality. The first ever International Women’s Day was called to draw attention to the unacceptable and often dangerous working conditions that so many women faced worldwide. Although the occasion was celebrated in only a handful of countries, it brought over one million women out onto the streets, demanding not just better conditions at work but also the right to vote, to hold office and to be equal partners with men.

I suspect those courageous pioneers would look at our world today with a mixture of pride and disappointment. There has been remarkable progress as the last century has seen an unprecedented expansion of women’s legal rights and entitlements. Indeed, the advancement of women’s rights can lay claim to be one of the most profound social revolutions the world has seen.

One hundred years ago, only two countries allowed women to vote. Today, that right is virtually universal, and women have now been elected to lead Governments in every continent. Women, too, hold leading positions in professions from which they were once banned. Far more recently than a century ago, the police, courts and neighbors still saw violence in the home as a purely private matter. Today two-thirds of countries have specific laws that penalize domestic violence, and the United Nations Security Council now recognizes sexual violence as a deliberate tactic of war.

But despite this progress over the last century, the hopes of equality expressed on that first International Women’s Day are a long way from being realized. Almost two out of three illiterate adults are women. Girls are still less likely to be in school than boys. Every 90 seconds of every day, a woman dies in pregnancy or due to childbirth-related complications despite us having the knowledge and resources to make birth safe.

Across the world, women continue to earn less than men for the same work. In many countries, too, they have unequal access to land and inheritance rights. And despite high-profile advances, women still make up only 19 percent of legislatures, 8 percent of peace negotiators, and only 28 women are heads of state or government.

It is not just women who pay the price for this discrimination. We all suffer for failing to make the most of half the world’s talent and potential. We undermine the quality of our democracy, the strength of our economies, the health of our societies and the sustainability of peace. This year’s focus of International Women’s Day on women’s equal access to education, training, science and technology underscores the need to tap this potential.

The agenda to secure gender equality and women’s rights is a global agenda, a challenge for every country, rich and poor, north and south. It was in recognition of both its universality and the rewards if we get this right that the United Nations brought together four existing organizations to create UN Women. The goal of this new body, which I have the great privilege to lead, is to galvanize the entire UN system so we can deliver on the promise of the UN Charter of equal rights of men and women. It is something I have fought for my whole life.

As a young mother and a paediatrician, I experienced the struggles of balancing family and career and saw how the absence of childcare prevented women from paid employment. The opportunity to help remove these barriers was one of the reasons I went into politics. It is why I supported policies that extended health and childcare services to families and prioritized public spending for social protection.

As President, I worked hard to create equal opportunities for both men and women to contribute their talents and experiences to the challenges facing our country. That is why I proposed a Cabinet that had an equal number of men and women.

As Executive Director of UN Women, I want to use my journey and the collective knowledge and experience all around me to encourage progress towards true gender equality across the world. We will work, in close partnership with men and women, leaders and citizens, civil society, the private sector and the whole UN system to assist countries to roll out policies, programmes and budgets to achieve this worthy goal.

I have seen myself what women, often in the toughest circumstances, can achieve for their families and societies if they are given the opportunity. The strength, industry and wisdom of women remain humanity’s greatest untapped resource. We simply cannot afford to wait another 100 years to unlock this potential.

Sunday, March 30, 2008

Golda Meir

• It’s no accident many accuse me of conducting public affairs with my heart instead of my head. Well, what if I do? … Those who don’t know how to weep with their whole heart don’t know how to laugh either. 1973

• Let me tell you something that we Israelis have against Moses. He took us 40 years through the desert in order to bring us to the one spot in the Middle East that has no oil! 1973

Golda Meir

Golda Meir born Golda Mabovitch, May 3, 1898 - December 8, 1978, known as Golda Myerson from 1917-1956) was the fourth prime minister of the State of Israel.

After serving as the Minister of Labour and Foreign Minister, Golda Meir became Prime Minister of Israel on March 17, 1969. She was described as the "Iron Lady" of Israeli politics years before that famous title (compliment!) became associated with British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher.[1] David Ben-Gurion used to call her "the only man in the Cabinet." Meir was Israel's first woman prime minister and the third woman in the world to hold this office but the first to do so without a family member having been head of state.

Meir was born as Golda Mabovitz in Kiev in the Russian Empire (today Ukraine), to Blume Naidtich and Moshe Mabovitch, a carpenter. Golda wrote in her autobiography that her earliest memories were of her father boarding up the front door in response to rumors of an imminent pogrom.

The family settled in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where her father found a job as a carpenter and her mother ran a grocery store. At the age of eight, she was already put in charge of watching the store when her mother went to the market for supplies.

Golda attended the Fourth Street School (now Golda Meir School) across from the Schlitz Brewing Complex from 1906 to 1912. A leader early on, Golda organized a fundraiser to pay for her classmates' textbooks. After forming the American Young Sisters Society, she rented a hall and scheduled a public meeting for the event. When she began school, she did not know English, but she graduated as valedictorian of her class.

At 14, she went to North Division High School and worked part-time. Her mother wanted her to leave school and marry, but she rebelled. She bought a train ticket to Denver, Colorado, and went to live with her married sister, Sheyna Korngold. The Korngolds held intellectual evenings at their home where Meir was exposed to debates on Zionism, literature, women's suffrage, trade unionism and more. In her autobiography, she wrote: "To the extent that my own future convictions were shaped and given form...those talk-filled nights in Denver played a considerable role." In Denver, she also met Morris Meyerson, a sign painter, whom she married at the age of 19.

In 1913, Golda returned to her high school in Milwaukee, graduating in 1915. While there, she became an active member of Young Poalei Zion, which later became Habonim, the Labor Zionist youth movement.. She spoke at public meetings, embraced Socialist Zionism and hosted visitors from Palestine.

Golda and Morris married in 1917 and began planning to make aliyah (immigration to the Land of Israel, then a part of the Ottoman Empire). They made the move to Palestine in 1921, together with Golda's sister Sheyna.

In Palestine, the couple decided to join a kibbutz. Their first application, to Kibbutz Merhavia in the Jezreel Valley, was rejected, but this decision was later overturned. Golda's duties included picking almonds, planting trees, working in the chicken coops and running the kitchen. Recognizing her leadership abilities, the kibbutz chose her as its representative to the Histadrut, the General Federation of Labour. In 1924, Golda and her husband left the kibbutz life and lived briefly in Tel Aviv before settling in Jerusalem. There they had two children, a son Menachem (born 1924) and a daughter Sarah (born 1926). In 1928, Golda was elected secretary of Moetzet HaPoalot (Working Women's Council), which required her to spend two years (1932-34) as an emissary in the United States. The children went with her, but Morris stayed in Jerusalem. Morris and Golda grew apart but never divorced. Morris died in 1951.

In 1949, Meir was elected to the Knesset as a member of Mapai and served continuously until 1974. From 1949 to 1956, she served as Minister of Labor, introducing major housing and road construction projects.

In 1956, she became Foreign Minister under Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. Her predecessor, Moshe Sharett, had asked all members of the foreign service to Hebraicize their last names. Upon her appointment as foreign minister, she shortened "Meyerson" to "Meir," which means "illuminate."

After Levi Eshkol's sudden death on February 26, 1969, the party elected Meir as his successor. Meir came out of retirement to take office on March 17, 1969, serving as prime minister until 1974. Meir maintained the coalition government formed in 1967, after the Six Day War, in which Mapai merged with two other parties (Rafi and Ahdut HaAvoda) to form the Israel Labor party.

In 1969 and the early 1970s, Meir met with many world leaders to promote her vision of peace in the Middle East, including Richard Nixon(1969), Nicolae Ceausescu (1972) and Pope Paul VI (1973). In 1973, she hosted the chancellor of West Germany, Willy Brandt in Israel.

In August 1970, Meir accepted a U.S. peace initiative that called for an end to the War of Attrition and an Israeli pledge to withdraw to "secure and recognized boundaries" in the framework of a comprehensive peace settlement. The Gahal party quit the national unity government in protest, but Meir continued to lead the remaining coalition.

In the days leading up to the Yom Kippur War, Israeli intelligence was not able to determine conclusively that an attack was imminent. Six hours before the outbreak of hostilities, Meir met with Minister of Defense Moshe Dayan and general David Elazar. While Dayan continued to argue that war was unlikely, Elazar advocated launching a pre-emptive strike on Syrian forces.

Meir believed that Israel could not depend on European countries to supply Israel with military equipment and the only country that might come to Israel's assistance was the United States. Fearing that the U.S. would be wary of intervening if Israel were perceived as initiating the hostilities, Meir decided against a pre-emptive strike. Then-U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger later confirmed Meir's assessment by stating that if Israel had launched a pre-emptive strike, Israel would not have received "so much as a nail."

Following the Yom Kippur War, Meir's government was plagued by in-fighting and questions over Israel's lack of preparedness for the war. The Agranat Commission appointed to investigate the war cleared her of direct responsibility, and her party won the elections in December 1973, but she resigned on April 11, 1974, bowing to what she felt was the "will of the people." Yitzhak Rabin succeeded her on June 3, 1974.

In 1975, Meir was awarded the Israel Prize for her special contribution to the State of Israel.

On December 8, 1978, Golda Meir died of cancer in Jerusalem at the age of 80. She was buried on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem on December 12, 1978

Source

Read more about this fascinating woman here, here and here.

Friday, March 28, 2008

Margaret Mead

Instead of being presented with stereotypes by age, sex, color, class, or religion, children must have the opportunity to learn that within each range, some people are loathsome and some are delightful.

It is an open question whether any behavior based on fear of eternal punishment can be regarded as ethical or should be regarded as merely cowardly.

Margaret Mead

born December 16, 1901, Philadelphia, Pa., U.S.
died November 15, 1978, New York, N.Y.

Margaret Mead.

American anthropologist whose great fame owed as much to the force of her personality and her outspokenness as it did to the quality of her scientific work.

Mead entered DePauw University in 1919 and transferred to Barnard College a year later. She graduated from Barnard in 1923 and entered the graduate school of Columbia University, where she studied with and was greatly influenced by anthropologists Franz Boas and Ruth Benedict (a lifelong friend). Mead received an M.A. in 1924 and a Ph.D. in 1929. In 1925, during the first of her many field trips to the South Seas, she gathered material for the first of her 23 books, Coming of Age in Samoa (1928; new ed., 1968), a perennial best-seller and a characteristic example of her reliance on observation rather than statistics for data. The book clearly indicates her belief in cultural determinism, a position that caused some later 20th-century anthropologists to question both the accuracy of her observations and the soundness of her conclusions.

During her many years with the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, she successively served as assistant curator (1926–42), associate curator (1942–64), curator of ethnology (1964–69), and curator emeritus (1969–78). Her contributions to science received special recognition when, at the age of 72, she was elected to the presidency of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1979 she was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States's highest civilian honour.

As an anthropologist, Mead was best known for her studies of the nonliterate peoples of Oceania, especially with regard to various aspects of psychology and culture, the cultural conditioning of sexual behaviour, natural character, and culture change. As a celebrity, she was most notable for her forays into such far-ranging topics as women's rights, childrearing, sexual morality, nuclear proliferation, race relations, drug abuse, population control, environmental pollution, and world hunger.

Source

Read more here, here and here.

Thursday, March 27, 2008

Babe Didrikson Zaharias

• Luck? Sure. But only after long practice and only with the ability to think under pressure. • The formula for success is simple: practice and concentration then more practice and more concentration.

born June 26, 1911, Port Arthur, Texas, U.S.
died September 27, 1956, Galveston, Texas

American sportswoman, one of the greatest athletes of the 20th century, performing in basketball, track and field, and later golf.

From 1930 through 1932, Didrikson was a member of the women's All-America basketball team. During the same period she also won eight events and tied in a ninth in national championship competition in track and field. In the 1932 Women's Amateur Athletic Association (AAU), competing as a team by herself, Didrikson won six individual events and the team title, outscoring the 20-women runner-up team from the Illinois Athletic Club 30 points to 22. At the 1932 Olympic Games in Los Angeles she won the 80-metre hurdles and the javelin throw and was deprived of a third gold medal in the high jump only because she had used the then-unorthodox Western roll to achieve the highest jump; she was awarded the silver medal instead. She also excelled in baseball and softball, swimming, figure skating, billiards, and even football.
In 1938 Didrikson married George Zaharias, a professional wrestler. She began playing golf casually in 1932, but from 1934 she played that game exclusively. Restored to amateur status after some years as a professional, she won the U.S. Women's Amateur tournament in 1946. The next year she won 17 straight golf championships, including the British Ladies Amateur, of which she was the first American holder. As a professional again from 1948, she won the U.S. Women's Open in that year and in 1950. From 1948 through 1951 she was the leading money winner among woman golfers. Diagnosed with cancer, she underwent surgery in 1953, then went on to win the U.S. Open again in 1954.

Didrikson Zaharias's autobiography, This Life I've Led, appeared in 1955.

Source

More here, here and here.

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Katharine Hepburn

If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun.

Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get — only what you are expecting to give — which is everything. What you will receive in return varies. But it really has no connection with what you give. You give because you love and cannot help giving.
Katharine Hepburn

Born May 12, 1907 in Hartford, Connecticut, she was the daughter of a doctor and a suffragette, both of whom always encouraged her to speak her mind, develop it fully, and exercise her body to its full potential. An athletic tomboy as a child, she was also very close to her brother, Tom, and was devastated at age 14 to find him dead, the apparent result of accidentally hanging himself while practicing a hanging trick their father had taught them. For many years after this, Katharine used his birthdate, November 8, as her own. She then became very shy around girls her age, and was largely schooled at home. She did attend Bryn Mawr College, however, and it was here that she decided to become an actress, appearing in many of their productions.

After graduating, she began getting small roles in plays on Broadway and elsewhere. She always attracted attention in these parts, especially for her role in "Art and Mrs. Bottle" (1931); then, she finally broke into stardom when she took the starring role of the Amazon princess Antiope in "A Warrior's Husband" (1932). The inevitable film offers followed, and after making a few screen tests, she was cast in A Bill of Divorcement (1932), opposite John Barrymore. The film was a hit, and after agreeing to her salary demands, RKO signed her to a contract. She made five films between 1932 and 1934. For her third, Morning Glory (1933) she won her first Academy Award. Her fourth, Little Women (1933) was the most successful picture of its day.

But stories were beginning to leak out of her haughty behavior off- screen and her refusal to play the Hollywood Game, always wearing slacks and no makeup, never posing for pictures or giving interviews. Audiences were shocked at her unconventional behavior instead of applauding it, and so when she returned to Broadway in 1934 to star in "The Lake", the critics panned her and the audiences, who at first bought up tickets, soon deserted her. When she returned to Hollywood, things didn't get much better. From the period 1935-1938, she had only two hits: Alice Adams (1935), which brought her her second Oscar nomination, and Stage Door (1937); the many flops included Break of Hearts (1935), Sylvia Scarlett (1935), Mary of Scotland (1936), Quality Street (1937) and the now- classic Bringing Up Baby (1938).

With so many flops, she came to be labeled "box-office poison." She decided to go back to Broadway to star in "The Philadelphia Story" (1938), and was rewarded with a smash. She quickly bought the film rights, and so was able to negotiate her way back to Hollywood on her own terms, including her choice of director and co-stars. The film version of The Philadelphia Story (1940), was a box-office hit, and Hepburn, who won her third Oscar nomination for the film, was bankable again. For her next film, Woman of the Year (1942), she was paired with Spencer Tracy, and the chemistry between them lasted for eight more films, spanning the course of 25 years, and a romance that lasted that long off-screen. (She received her fourth Oscar nomination for the film.) Their films included the very successful Adam's Rib (1949), Pat and Mike (1952), and Desk Set (1957).

With The African Queen (1951), Hepburn moved into middle-aged spinster roles, receiving her fifth Oscar nomination for the film. She played more of these types of roles throughout the 50s, and won more Oscar nominations for many of them, including her roles in Summertime (1955), The Rainmaker (1956) and Suddenly, Last Summer (1959). Her film roles became fewer and farther between in the 60s, as she devoted her time to her ailing partner Spencer Tracy. For one of her film appearances in this decade, in Long Day's Journey Into Night (1962), she received her ninth Oscar nomination. After a five-year absence from films, she then made Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), her last film with Tracy and the last film Tracy ever made; he died just weeks after finishing it. It garnered Hepburn her tenth Oscar nomination and her second win. The next year, she did The Lion in Winter (1968), which brought her her eleventh Oscar nomination and third win.

In the 70s, she turned to making made-for-TV films, with The Glass Menagerie (1973) (TV), Love Among the Ruins (1975) (TV) and The Corn Is Green (1979) (TV). She still continued to make an occasional appearance in feature films, such as Rooster Cogburn (1975), with John Wayne, and On Golden Pond (1981), with Henry Fonda. This last brought her her twelfth Oscar nomination and fourth win - the latter currently still a record for an actress.

She made more TV-films in the 80s, and wrote her autobiography, 'Me', in 1991. Her last feature film was Love Affair (1994), with Warren Beatty and Annette Bening, and her last TV- film was One Christmas (1994) (TV). With her health declining she retired from public life in the mid-nineties. She died at the age of 96 at her home in Old Saybrook, Connecticut.

Source

Read more here, here and here.

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Raven

I have a blogfriend named Raven
She lives in a nest out East.
Her wisdom comes over the Internets
Wise and wonderful she is the best.

Dianne at Forks Off The Moment introduced me to Katherine AKA Raven. I love her writing. She is wonderfully creative and inspires others to be creative and to think.

She has a little game called Wordzzle where she gives us certain words and we are to write stories using them. Actually there are two challenges and if you want to try the words for this week are"

Words for next week's ten-word challenge are: arbitration, music, salamanders, frankinsence, trojan horse, balderdash, bottomless pit, fantastic, pugnacious, Trivial Pursuit

And for the mini challenge: maniac, video store, telephone pole, flute player, windy day

They are due by Saturday.

I subscribe to Raven's Blog using Google Reader and today I read her blog about feminism. I have known for a long time that I was a feminist. Raven finishes her post with the following:

"To be a feminist isn't to be anti-male. To be feminist is to be pro human, to recognize that women are more than just pretty play things for men, more than "just" mothers and housekeepers. The idea of feminism isn't to diminish the gifts of men, but to acknowledge the many gifts that women also have to offer. As many men have discovered, when they open up doors for women, they open up doors for themselves too.

The biggest lesson we will learn when we truly embrace feminism (and when we move beyond racism and other forms of bias and hatred) is that improving the lot of any person or group of people in society, improves the lot of all of us. It's a win win solution. Or that's what I think."

I think so also, My mother worked as a secretary for years and those she worked for depended upon her to make them look good. Yet they got the big bucks and she had to struggle. Because she was a woman. So my post for women's history today goes to a woman that most of you have never heard about. Just a woman I have come to admire for her courage to face her demons and to reach out to others and make all of those of us who know her glad for the experience. Her humanity is something each of us can admire and emulate.

She had this little movie on her blog and I stole it for this post. Enjoy. And thanks Raven for being my inspiration. ARTYAL.. j-bear

Monday, March 24, 2008

Clara Schumann

"Composing gives me great pleasure...there is nothing that surpasses the joy of creation, if only because through it one wins hours of self-forgetfulness, when one lives in a world of sound."
Clara Schumann

Clara Josephine Wieck Schumann (September 13, 1819 – May 20, 1896) was a German musician, one of the most distinguished pianists of the Romantic era, as well as a composer. Her prestige - she became known as "the high priestess of music" - exerted over a 61-year concertizing career, changed the format and repertoire of the piano concert and the tastes of the listening public. Her husband was composer Robert Schumann.

Clara Schumann was trained from the age of 5 with her father, the well-known piano pedagogue Friedrich Wieck. Prior to beginning her lessons, young Clara had only uttered her first words some time between 4 and 5 years old. In fact, she described herself as understanding as little as she spoke and as having disinterest in all that was passing around her, a condition that was not "entirely cured" - as she put it- until she was 8 years old. Clara Schumann's pattern of delayed speech and subsequent virtuosity is shared by other famous late-talkers such as fellow pianist Arthur Rubinstein, physicists Albert Einstein and Richard Feynman, and mathematician Julia Robinson among others.

Clara Schumann had a brilliant career as a pianist from the age of 13 up to her marriage. Her marriage to Schumann was opposed by her father. She continued to perform and compose after the marriage even as she raised seven children. An eighth child died in infancy. In the various tours on which she accompanied her husband, she extended her own reputation further than the outskirts of Germany, and it was thanks to her efforts that his compositions became generally known in Europe. Johannes Brahms, at age 20, met the couple in 1853 and his friendship with Clara Schumann lasted until her death. J. Brahms helped Clara Schumann through the illness of her husband with a caring that bordered on love. Later that year, she also met violinist Joseph Joachim who became one of her frequent performance partners. Clara Schumann is credited with refining the tastes of audiences through her presentation of works by earlier composers including those of Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven as well as those of Robert Schumann and J. Brahms.

Clara Schumann often took charge of the finances and general house running due to Robert's inclination to depression and instability. Part of her responsibility included making money, which she did performing - often Robert's music. She continued to play not only for the financial stability, but because she wished not to be forgotten as a pianist. She had grown up performing and desired to continue performing. Robert, while admiring her talent, wanted a traditional wife to bear children and make a happy home, which in his eyes and the eyes of society were in direct conflict with the life of a performer. Furthermore, while she loved touring, Robert hated it and preferred to sit at the piano and compose.

From the time of her husband's death she devoted herself principally to the interpretation of her husband's works. But when she first visited England in 1856, the critics received Robert's music with a chorus of disapproval. She returned to London in 1865 and continued her visits annually, with the exception of four seasons, until 1882. She also appeared there each year from 1885 to 1888. In 1878 she was appointed teacher of the piano at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt am Main, a post she held until 1892, and in which she contributed greatly to the improvement of modern piano playing technique.

Clara Schumann played her last public concert in 1891. She died five years later, in 1896, due to complications from a stroke. Besides being remembered for her eminence as a performer of nearly all kinds of pianoforte music, she was an impressive composer. Additionally, she was the authoritative editor of her husband's works for the publishing firm of Breitkopf & Härtel. She is buried at Bonn's Alter Friedhof old cemetery.

Source

You can read more about her here, here and here.

Sunday, March 23, 2008

Barbara Streisand

I've been called many names like perfectionist, difficult and obsessive. I think it takes obsession, takes searching for the details for any artist to be good.

There is nothing more important in life than love.
Barbara Streisand

Barbra Joan Streisand (pronounced STRY-sand, IPA: /ˈstraɪsænd/; born April 24, 1942) is a two time Academy Award-winning American singer and film and theatre actress. She has also achieved some notability as a composer, political activist, film producer and director. She has won Oscars for Best Actress and Best Original Song as well as multiple Emmy Awards, Grammy Awards, and Golden Globe Awards.

She is considered one of the most commercially and critically successful female entertainers in modern entertainment history and one of the best selling solo recording artists in the US, with RIAA-certified shipments of over 71 million albums. She is the highest ranking female artist on the Recording Industry Association of America's (RIAA) Top Selling Artists list.

She has sold approximately 145 million albums worldwide.[citation needed]From a period beginning in 1969 and ending in 1980, Streisand appeared in the annual motion picture exhibitors poll of Top 10 Box Office attractions a total of 10 times, often as the only woman on the list. But after the disappointment of All Night Long in 1981, Streisand's film output decreased considerably. She has only acted in five films since.

Streisand produced a number of her own films, setting up Barwood Films in 1972. For Yentl (1983), she was producer, director, writer, and star, an experience she repeated for The Prince of Tides (1991). Steven Spielberg called Yentl a masterpiece, and both won critical acclaim. There was controversy when Yentl received five Academy Award nominations but none for the major categories of Best Picture, Actress, or Director. Prince of Tides received even more nominations, including Best Picture, but the director was not nominated.

In 2004, Streisand made a return to film acting, after an eight-year hiatus, in the comedy Meet the Fockers (a sequel to Meet the Parents), playing opposite Dustin Hoffman, Ben Stiller, Blythe Danner and Robert De Niro. Meet the Fockers is the highest grossing comedy film in history.

Barbra has made only 17 films in her 40 year movie career, this however hasn't stopped her accumulative worldwide box office total being over 1.3 billion US Dollars.

Streisand has long been an active supporter of the Democratic Party and many of its causes, such as working against global warming, supporting gun control (she executive-produced the film The Long Island Incident, about a mass shooting on the Long Island Railroad), getting more useful aid for victims of Hurricane Katrina, and questioning the motives behind the 2003 invasion of Iraq. She also strongly supports women's reproductive rights. Barbra Streisand performed both at Lyndon B. Johnson's (1965) and Bill Clinton's (1993) inauguration galas. On November 27, 2007, Streisand endorsed 2008 presidential candidate Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Source

Visit her web site here.

Read more about her here, here and here.

Saturday, March 22, 2008

Jane Goodall

The greatest danger to our future is apathy.

Every individual matters. Every individual has a role to play. Every individual makes a difference.
Jane Goodall

Jane Goodall is the world's foremost authority on chimpanzees, having closely observed their behavior for the past quarter century in the jungles of the Gombe Game Reserve in Africa, living in the chimps' environment and gaining their confidence.

Her observations and discoveries are intemationally heralded. Her research and writing have made, and are making, revolutionary inroads into scientific thinking regarding the evolutions of humans.

Dr. Goodall received her Ph.D. from Cambridge University in 1965. She has been the Scientific Director of the Gombe Stream Research Center since 1967. In 1984, Jane Goodall received the J. Paul Getty Wildlife Conservation Prize for "helping millions of people understand the importance of wildlife conservation to life on this planet." Her other awards and international recognitions fill pages.

Her scientific articles have appeared in many issues of National Geographic. She has written scores of papers for internationally known scientific journals. Dr. Goodall has also written two books, Wild Chimpanzees and In The Shadow of Man. She pleads to thousands of people throughout the world on behalf of her career-long sponsor, the L.S.B. Leakey Foundation.

Jane Goodall attributes her dedication and insight to her work and her mission in life to her mother, internationally known author, Vanne Goodall.

In 1985, Jane Goodall's twenty-five years of anthropological and conservation research was published, helping us all to better understand the relationship between all creatures. She has now devoted over thirty years to her mission.

Dr. Goodall has expanded her global outreach with the founding of the Jane Goodall Institute based in Ridgefield, CT. She now teaches and encourages young people to appreciate the conversation of chimpanzees and all creatures great and small. She lectures, writes, teaches and continues her mission in many inventive ways, including the Chimpanzee Guardian Project.

Source

Read more here, here and here.

Friday, March 21, 2008

Rachel Louise Carson

"If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in."

Rachel Louise Carson

Rachel Louise Carson (May 27, 1907 – April 14, 1964) was an American marine biologist and nature writer whose writings are credited with advancing the global environmental movement.

Carson started her career as a biologist in the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, and became a full-time nature writer in the 1950s. Her widely praised 1951 bestseller The Sea Around Us won her financial security and recognition as a gifted writer. Her next book, The Edge of the Sea, and the republished version of her first book, Under the Sea-Wind, were also bestsellers. Together, her sea trilogy explores the gamut of ocean life, from the shores to the surface to the deep sea.

In the late 1950s, Carson turned her attention to conservation and the environmental problems caused by synthetic pesticides. The result was Silent Spring (1962), which brought environmental concerns to an unprecedented portion of the American public. Silent Spring spurred a reversal in national pesticide policy—leading to a nationwide ban on DDT and other pesticides—and the grassroots environmental movement it inspired led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. Carson was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Source

Find out more about this remarkable woman here, here and here.

Abigail Adams

These are times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed.

• I am more and more convinced that Man is a dangerous creature, and that power whether vested in many or a few is ever grasping, and like the grave cries give, give. The great fish swallow up the small, and he who is most strenuous for the Rights of the people, when vested with power, is as eager after the prerogatives of Government. You tell me of degrees of perfection to which Humane Nature is capable of arriving, and I believe it, but at the same time lament that our admiration should arise from the scarcity of the instances. (letter, 1775)
Abigail Adams

Abigail Adams (November 11, 1744-October 28, 1818) advocated and modeled an expanded role for women in public affairs during the formative days of the United States. Married to John Adams, she was an invaluable partner to him as he developed his political career, culminating in the presidency of the United States.

She left a voluminous correspondence, providing information on everyday life and insight into the activities in the corridors of power during her time. Her letters show her to have been a woman of keen intelligence, resourceful, competent, self-sufficient, willful, vivacious, and opinionated—a formidable force. Her writing reveals a dedication to principle, a commitment to rights for women and for African-Americans, fierce partisanship in matters of her husband's and her family's interest, and an irreverent sense of humor.

She received no formal schooling. She certainly benefited from the many books and the lively conversation in the parsonage. Her lack of education later embarrassed her. She was self-conscious about her inability to spell and punctuate properly or to speak or read French. Even so, Abigail was a devoted reader of history and an astute judge of its impact upon her own time.

Her father, William Smith (1707-1783), was a liberal Congregationalist, who often exchanged pulpits with his friend, Ebenezer Gay. Smith was an Arminian. He did not preach the doctrines of predestination, original sin, or the full divinity of Christ. Rather, he emphasized the importance of reason and morality in religious life. This simple faith his daughter Abigail confessed when she was received into membership in the Weymouth church on June 24, 1759.

That same year, Abigail Smith met John Adams. By 1762 they were exchanging frankly affectionate love letters full of mischievous humor. Their wedding, on October 25, 1764, began one of history's great partnerships. They were lovers, friends, counselors, and mentors to one another into old age. John did not resent his wife's abilities to manage a farm and raise a family without him during his long absences on the nation's business. Rather, he took considerable pride in her accomplishments. He told her she was so successful in budgeting, planting, managing staff, regulating live-stock, buying provisions, nursing and educating her children, that their neighbors would surely remark on how much better things seemed to go in his absence.

From 1783-88, Abigail accompanied her husband on diplomatic missions to France and England. Afterwards, she was glad to return to their farm in Braintree (Quincy). She told Thomas Jefferson she preferred her farm to "the court of St. James, where I seldom meet with characters so inoffensive as my hens and chickens, or minds so well improved as my garden."

A visit below the Mason-Dixon line strengthened Abigail's conviction, passionately shared by her husband, that slavery was not only evil, but a threat to the American democratic experiment. Neither John nor Abigail had any use for Southern slavery accommodationists. On March 31, 1776, Abigail wrote that she doubted the distinguished Virginians in the corridors of power had quite the "passion for Liberty" they claimed, since they had been used to "depriving their fellow Creatures" of freedom.

On February 13, 1791, she wrote to her husband regarding a black servant boy who had come to her asking to go to school to learn to write. Abigail enrolled the boy in a local evening school. A neighbor reported serious objections of several people to the black boy's presence. Swiftly Abigail responded that the boy was "a Freeman as much as any of the young Men and merely because his Face is Black, is he to be denied instruction? How is he to be qualified to procure a livelihood? . . . I have not thought it any disgrace to my self to take him into my parlor and teach him both to read and write." No further complaints were made.

Often, Abigail spoke up for married women's property rights and more opportunities for women, particularly in education. She believed that women should not submit to laws clearly not made in their interest. Women should not content themselves with the role of being decorous companions to their husbands. They should educate themselves and be recognized for their intellectual capabilities, for their ability to shoulder responsibilities of managing household, family, and financial affairs, and for their capacity morally to guide and influence the lives of their children and husbands. Although she did not insist on full female enfranchisement, in her celebrated letter of March, 1776, she exhorted her husband to "remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice or Representation."

Source

Read more about Mrs. Adams here, here and here.