| 05-01 TABLE of CONTENTS:
The celebration Bona DeaBona Dea
(Latin: "Good Goddess")
America's Most Dangerous Woman; a
Hell-Raiser
Women and Elderly are STILL Not Properly
Represented in Heart-Related Medical Studies
For 268 Years Yale University Refused
Entrance to Women
Cockrell First Women to Govern One
of the Nation s Largest Cities
DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and
EVENTS
QUOTES by
Mother Jones. Ethel Payne, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Courtney Thorne-Smith,
and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
Celebration of the Good Goddess
The celebration Bona DeaBona Dea (Latin: "Good Goddess")
was held each May 1 in Roman Empire. It is not certain if it was a precoursor
of the later May Day celebration or was adopted from Germanic and Britannica
celebrations of the same kind and there was also a strong Greek influence
from the cult of Damia.
Actually, celebrations of "May Day" were
almost universal as a celebration of fund
Bona was to celebrate fruitfulness, both in the earth
and in women and was, in some respects, a joining of various goddesses
who symbolized both animal and floral fecundity.
She was identified with various goddesses who had
similar functions. The dedication day of her temple on the Aventine was
May 1.
Her temple was cared for and attended by women only,
as was the second celebration at the beginning of December. According to
some sources, her priestesses were called damiatrix(es).
The month of May is named for Maia, the Roman goddess
of spring and growth.
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May is usually celebrated as Heritage Month.
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America's Most Dangerous Woman; a Hell-Raiser for Human Rights
and Conditions for America's Labor Force
 B.
05-01-1830, Mary Harris (Mother) Jones, Irish-born, American developed
into America's foremost labor organizers from a valley of great sadness.
Her husband and children died in a yellow fever epidemic
in 1867 and just four years later her dressmaking business and all her
possessions were destroyed in the great Chicago fire.
Yet, through a tortuous journey, she found more great
courage within herself to become involved in the labor movement, devoting
the next 60 years of her life to bettering working conditions for her fellow
workers - and all but abandoning any private social life.
An impassioned speaker, she was also an activist and
was in the forefront of major labor disputes which included organizing
the pitiable children's 1903 march to President Theodore Roosevelt's palatial
home to dramatize the plight of child labor; the 1886 Haymarket riots in
Chicago; coal mine strikes beginning in 1900 and extending to 1923 when
she was 93; led the famous coal miner's housewife brigade which beat back
strikebreakers with mops and brooms in 1902.
At age 100 she was filmed gving an fervent speech
for the labor movement that gives some indication of the power she was
able to exert during her remarkable life.
Much feared by authorities, she was often arrested
and once was even convicted of a faked charge of conspiracy to commit murder
that was quickly set aside. She defied thugs and at age 89 fought in the
thick of the 1919 steel strike. She was arrested for her labor activities
many times and even organized protests within the jails.
In the book American Women in the Progressive Era,
1900-1920, Dorothy and Carl J. Schneider wrote:
"... Jones said that every strike she had
been in had been won by WOMEN... If arrested, the women took their babies
to jail with them and kept them awake and crying all night by singing,
until the guards could stand the racket no longer. (In 1907, Greensburg,
Pa., Mother Jones tells imprisoned wives of striking miners to 'sing
to the babies all night long.') Women (often)
persuaded their striking husbands to stay home while they themselves walked
the picket lines on the shaky and often- disproved theory that scabs and
police would not assault women. They did (assault them); sometimes they
killed them."
For more than half a century Mother Jones appeared
wherever there were labor troubles: in Pittsburgh during the great railroad
strike in 1877, in Chicago at the time of the Haymarket riot of 1886, in
Birmingham in 1894, among the anthracite coal miners of Pennsylvania in
1900 1902, in the Colorado coalfields in 1903-1906, in Idaho in 1906, where
she was involved in a copper mine strike, in Colorado again in 1913 and
1914, in New York City in 1915-1916, where she was active in the garment-
and streetcar- workers' strikes, and throughout the country in 1919 in
the nationwide steel strike of that year.
"In 1923, at the age
of ninety-three, she was still working among striking coal miners in West
Virginia. A passionate organizer, she counted among her more spectacular
achievements the leading of a march of miners wives who routed strikebreakers
with brooms and mops in the Pennsylvania coalfields in 1902, and the leading
of a march of striking child textile workers from Kensington, Pennsylvania,
to President Theodore Roosevelt s Long Island home in 1903 to dramatize
the case for abolition of child labor. In 1905 she helped found the Industrial
Workers of the World."
In a new biography, Elliott Corn brings out some
"unsavory" elements of Mother Jones' life, including the rumor
that she was a madam in a house of prostitution in Denver.
[Ed. note: Prostitution at the time was almost legal in
Denver and most of the United States and was openly patronized by the best
men of the area, industrialists, politicians, etc. - as well as most other
men. Chicago, for example, had more than 3,000 listed houses of prostitution
at the time. Today, forced underground, prostitutes are under the complete
control of male pimps instead of the sometimes more begnign "houses"
run by women. Jobs for women were so scarce and poorly paid that prostitution
was often the only opportunity a woman alone had to earn money to live
on.]
Following her alleged stay in Denver, she evidently
moved back to Chicago where "her political consciousness
developed in Gilded Age Chicago, where industrialists grew rich off immigrant
children and where Jones grew old as an underpaid seamstress,"
according to Corn although he does quote her as saying to a rival labor
leader who was trying to ruin her with the rumor, "Don't
you think whatever my past might have been that I have more than made up
for it"
New biographies or not, she was a vibrant,
hell-raising speaker who during her lifetime became not only one of the
great spellbinders of the era, but one of the most active for decent, living
conditions for workers. And she used everything in her arsenal to influence
laborers to fight for their human rights.
According to Corn,
"one moment, she was the classic Victorian
mother - soft, gentle, and loving as she cared for miners children in strike
camps. The next, she was a stern matriarch whose word was law.
"Jones also highlighted the religious aspects
of her motherhood. Borrowing liberally from biblical prose for her speeches,
she played the part of a secular Mother Mary before audiences of Catholic
immigrant workers."
She drank, she swore, she told risque jokes...
she was typical of her time as a "blue collar worker." What else
would anyone expect her to be but what she was? And to bond with those
she would influence, namely blue collar workers.
What Corn forgets - as most men biographers never
take into consideration - is that life for women was very different than
it is or was for men, that women are/were forced to use different tactics
and different words than men would use in the same circumstances.
Corn's greatest condemnation of Jones is her womanliness
in an era when man was complete dictator and judge. As with many men biographers,
he just doesn't understand the compromises and evasions a woman must make.
Mother Jones was NOT a feminist in today's use of
the term since she felt that class warfare was the primary concern of the
time. She was for strong families with the male wage earner earning enough
money to support his family.
Unlike her critics, Mother Jones knew that anyone
to be effect has to focus their message and work. Her focus was on the
deplorable working conditions and pay of the working class - conditions
that today's workers' because of the work of Mother Jones fortunately have
no conception of in the days before workers compensation, unemployment
insurance, minimum wage, 50-hour week, safety and health requirements,
and no pension or social security.
If the need for labor unions had not been there, they
would never have developed.
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Women and Elderly are STILL Not Properly Represented in Heart-Related
Medical Studies - 250,000 Die Each Year
Women are still seriously under-represented in heart-related studies
even though heart disease is the number one killer of women according to
a 2001 study published in the American Journal of Medicne.
Women's enrollment in heart-related studies are only
25%, only a rise of 5% in ten years in spite of pledges of drug companies.
In an Associated Press article, Dr. Eric Peterson,
one of the authors of the study from Duke University said the problem seriously
hampers cardiologists trying to decide what treatments are best for their
patients.
AP reported the study reviewed 593 studies published
from 1966 through March of last year and found only slight gains in female
and elderly representation during the past decade. Women's enrollment only
rose from 20 to 25% in the 1990-200 decade in spite of efforts of the National
Institute of Health while women remain at least 43% of patients suffering
heart attacks.
The study of patients 75 or older (a group often includes
more women because they live longer) had the terrible record of rising
from 1 to 9 percent to cover the 37% of all heart attacks that occur to
this age group.
The AP article goes on,
"The numbers in the
study were 'very sobering,'
since heart disease is the top killer of women as well as men, resulting
in more than 250,000 deaths among women alone each year, said Dr. Lynne
Perry-Bottinger, a cardiologist at New York Hospital Medical Center who
was not involved in the re search.
"It would behoove all of us to include more elderly
and women because basically these are us in 30 to 40 years,' she said.
"It appears the drug companies do not feel they
will get a return on their investments when dealing with eldedrly or women
studies according to Peterson, and the companies also feel the elderly
have a variety of ailments and drug testing might exacerbate them."
The Food and Drug Administration published guidelines
in 1989 recommending that studies of drugs likely to be used by the elderly
should adequately reflect the population to be treated. The National Institutes
of Health sought to close the gap in research in women with similar guidelines
in the early 1990s.
For example, there's virtually no information on how
cholesterol-lowering drugs affect people 75 and older, he said. [WOAH
Note: my personal physician says there are no studies to show how cholesterol-lowering
drugs affect women in general and there are no definitive figures on what
a woman's cholesteral levels should be.]
While drugs such as Latins have been shown to be remarkably
effective in younger patients, Peterson laid doctors might be reluctant
to prescribe untested medication in older patients who might also benefit.
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For 268 Years Yale University Refused Entrance to Women
When Yale University denied admission to would-be freshman Lucinda Foote,
16, in the 1920s, it noted that she was qualified in all respects
"except for her sex."
Yale University had denied admission to thousands
of women from its frounding in 1701 through 1969 when the women's movement
forced the college (in face of threatened lawsuits and bad publicity) to
finally accept them.
Maya Linn, best known for her Viet Nam Memorial, also
designed Yale University's Woman's Table that is literally a large table
of green granite incised on the surface with a spiraling design of the
years being counted off from the university's founding in 1701 through
1991 (the year of the monument's dedication).
Next to each year is the number of women enrolled
at Yale for that year. The stark march of 268 zeroes calls attention to
the 268 years there was no room at Yale's educational table for women.
It is a devastating revelation of men's disdain for women's rights. The
table is set at a 69-degree angle to its base to commemorate the date of
1969 when the first women were admitted to Yale.
Maya Linn attended Yale University.
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Cockrell First Women to Govern One of the Nation's Largest
Cities
On May 1, 1975, Lila Cockrell defeated nine male oppoents to become
mayor of San Antonio, Texas, the the nation's 10th largest city with a
population of 750,000.
LC was empowered to run for the mayoralty post following
Janet Gray Hayes's amazing victory in San Jose, California that in those
pre Silicon Valley days was far from the size of San Antonio, but her victory
convinced LC that a woman could be elected to head a big city.
Women had served as mayors of small towns since the
late 19th century but none of a major metropolis.
After serving on the city council for seven years,
she was told she would have made an excellent mayor were she not a woman!
Mayor Cockrell was 53 years old when elected, married
with two daughters. Her political life began with the League of Women Voters.
As usual, the male opponents were able to raise considerably
more money than the woman candidate and in the San Antonio race outspent
her three to one.
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05-01 DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and EVENTS
Died 05-01-1228: Isabella II - inherited the throne of Latin
Jerusalem from her mother who died at her birth. She was married off to
the Holy Roman emperor Frederick II by her male relatives. Frederick then
demanded title to her Jerusalem throne and then he then held it after her
death (in childbirth as had her mother). at the age of 16.
Born in 1212, Isabella was married at age 13.
Thus is the true story of the fate of most royal princesses,
seldom happy or happily ever after.
B. 05-01-1751, Judith Sargent Stevens Murray - U.S. writer.
JSSM is best remembered for her essays and journalistic
comment on contemporary public issues, especially women's rights during
the early days of the U.S. republic,
She wrote a regular column in a Massachusets publication
that featured a call for woman's education, something that did not exist
at the times except in rare instances at home. Ironically, while the forefathers
of U.S. democracy were calling for men's rights they continued to forbid
the same rights to women.
One of her best known essays is "Desultory Thoughts
upon the Utility of Encouraging a Degree of Self-Complacency, Especially
in Female Bosoms."
In 1795 her play The Medium, or A Happy Tea-Party
became one of the first plays produced in the U.S. written by an American
author.
B. 05-01-1816, Fidelia Fiske - U.S. educator and missionary to
Persia.
FF developed the Urmia Seminary (school) for girls
in Persia (today's Iran) where under Islamic rule at the time girls were
considered less than human and only fit for pleasing husbands and bearing
children. FF worked under terrible hardships that destroyed her health
but her work gained the respect of the native men and had a profound effect
on raising the standard of living for Persian women in general.
Some historians hold FF up as a prime example of the
new woman that was produced in the U.S. through education at Mount Holyoke
from which she graduated in 1842.
 B.
05-01-1852, Martha Jane (Calamity Jane) Canary - U.S. frontierswoman
and stagecoach driver.
CJ joined Buffalo Bill Wild West Show and has been
romanticized in movies, fiction stories, and legends so much that the real
CJ is almost impossible to describe.
She was rough mannered (as well most people of the
place and era) and as was also common in those days for women without the
protection of one man, was a prostitute of sorts.
She frequented bars, was rumored (mostly disproved)
to have driven stagecoaches, but she was a crack shot.
It is believed that she began roaming the mining areas
after she was orphaned at 15. Known as a companion of Wild Bill Hickock,
she is buried next to him - more as a tourist attraction since he died
many years before she did and their relationship was questionable at best.
She toured with several Wild West shows including
Buffalo Bill's.
She often dressed in men's clothing (also not a particularly
unusual thing in the pioneer west for active and poor women).
According to some legends (told mostly by herself),
she scouted for the army including Col. George Custer. She went to the
Black Hills of South Dakota with a geological expedition and stayed in
Deadwood after the gold strike there.
There she became a companion to Wild Bill Hickock
although a rumored marriage probably never took place.
The name "Calamity"
has been variously explained as being derived from her care of patients
during a smallpox epidemic or warnings to men who felt a single woman alone
was a plaything to be used as they would.
She eventually moved to El Paso and married (maybe).
She had a habit of referring to her male companions as husbands.
She exhibited herself in some shows following depictions
of her as a romantic character in the dime novels of the day. Living in
abject poverty for many years, she eventually traveled back to South Dakota
where she died in 1903 and was buried next to Wild Bill Hickock.
One historian writes: "
the celebrated figure of Western legend, poses a problem for biographers.
Was she a frontier Florence Nightingale, Indian fighter, army scout, gold
miner, pony express rider, bull-whacker, and stagecoach driver? Or merely
a camp follower, prostitute, and alcoholic?"
Most HIStorians come down on the side of disrepute
without once examining the situations of women in that time and place.
Was she at one time beautiful or always thick and
dumpy, a face swollen by dissipation? Was she ever truly married or was
her habit of calling any man she lived with a husband the true story?
Depending on the teller... But then the legends of
Hickock, known to shoot men in the back, have been brushed up for posterity
as have the histories of most men of popular legend.
B. 05-01-1855, Cecilia Beaux - artist, generally recognized as
the leading U.S. portrait painter of her day. Her first paintings, those
of her family, won prizes in the U.S. and Paris.
She was elected to the Socieacture; Nationale des
Beaux-Arts (Paris) and the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1933).
Her paintings are in major museums throughout the world including the Metropolitan
Museum of Art. An injury cut short her career.
One historian wrote:
"In 1895 she became the first woman instructor
at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and in 1896, on the strength
of her showing at the Paris Salon, she was elected to membership in the
Soci6t6 Nationale des Beaux-Arts. Cecilia Beaux moved to New York City
in 1900. Later major works included commissioned portraits of Mrs. Theodore
Roosevelt and her daughter Ethel, Mary Adelaide Nutting (for the Johns
Hopkins Hospital), Mrs. Andrew Carnegie, Richard Watson Gilder, and, for
the National Art Committee's project on World War I leaders, Adm. Lord
David Beatty, Georges Clemenceau, and Cardinal Mercier.
"Her paintings were placed in such major collections
as the National Collection of Fine Arts, the Metropolitan Museum, the Art
Institute of Chicago, the Luxembourg Museum of Paris, and the Uffizi Gallery
of Florence. Cecilia Beaux was acknowledged as one of the leading portraitists
of her day. Her work, while it suggested at times the influence of some
of her French Impressionist teachers, and at other times was compared to
that of John Singer Sargent, was not imitative of any master."
Some of her work is also exhibited at the Women's
Museum of Art in Washington, D.C.
B. 05-01-1864, Anna M. Jarvis - U.S. mother of Mother's Day.
After many women had attempted to have a special day
set aside to honor mothers after the U.S. Civil War, Jarvis was successful
in having the second Sunday of May set aside to honor mothers. By 1913
every state in the union established the observance and in 1914 President
Woodrow Wilson signed a joint resolution of Congress to officially recognize
the day.
She was unalterably opposed the commercialization
of the observance wanting to keep it a pure and simple remembrance. A number
of other women, including Julia Ward Howe had suggested Mother's Day, but
none were successful until Jarvis's campaign, which started in Philadelphia,
May 1908 with the pink carnation being worn if the mother was alive and
white in memorial.
The observance was originally to be a renunciation
of war, militarism, and the patriarchy that cost women their husbands and
sons in the Civil War.
Jarvis spent most of her declining years in attempt
to keep the holiday pure from the inroads of florists, jewelers, and the
like who made it a marketing circus.
Here is the original, pre-Hallmark, Mother's Day Proclamation,
penned in Boston by Julia Ward Howe in 1870:
"Arise, then, women of this
day!
Arise all women who have hearts,
Whether your baptism be that of water or of tears
Say firmly: 'We will not have great questions
decided by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands shall not come to us reeking of carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We women of one country
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs'
From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with Our own. It
says, 'Disarm, Disarm!'
The sword of murder is not the balance of
justice!
Blood does not wipe out dishonor
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war.
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace,
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God.
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality
May be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient
And at the earliest period consistent with its objects
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions.
The great and general interests of peace."
B. 05-01-1865, Florence Clinton Sutro - first woman in the U.S. to
receive a Ph.D., in music. FCS was the first woman to enroll in the
Woman's Law Class of New York University, and the founder of the National
Federation of Music Clubs.
B. 05-01-1871, Gertrude M. Foran Handrick - U.S. attorney.
As the only woman graduate in her class of 1911, GFH
was the first woman lawyer to be "allowed" to join the Cleveland,
Ohio, Bar Association. She had worked as a secretary in her father's law
office and secretly studied law before, over her father's objections, entered
law school after she was widowed and lost her daughter. She primarily practiced
real estate and banking law. She was an strong advocate for women's rights
and voting.
 left,
self-portrait of Romaine Brooks
click on image to see full-size
B. 05-01-1874, Romaine Brooks - U.S. artist whose palette of
primary black, grey and brown produced amazingly insightful portraits.
The daughter of an unstable mother and brother who
became dangerously paranoid, she was sent away to various schools. Following
their deaths she inherited a fortune.
She married for form's sake but lived openly as a
lesbian, maintaining am on\off liaison for 40-years with the wandering
Natalie Clifford Barney, noted U.S. expatriate writer.
She continued to paint until her late 80s. The largest collection
of her works are to be viewed at the National Museum of American Art, Washington,
DC.
above, right: Amazons in the Drawing
Room: The Art of Romaine Brooks
by Whitney Chadwick, Joe Lucchesi (Introduction),
Romaine Brooks, Nancy Risque Rohrbach B. 05-01-1875, Harriet Quimby - U.S. aviator.
HQ was the first woman to qualify for a pilot's license
(#37) from the Aero Club of America. She was the second licensed woman
in the world; Baroness de la Roche of France was the first.
HQ was the first woman to pilot a plane across the
English channel. Planes in 1912 were very similar to the Wright brothers'
original with open seats in the nose of the plane just in front of the
tiny engine and they had all struts exposed.
As a favor to a friend back in the United Statesto
take part in a Boston race, HQ took a passenger up for a ride. The large
man panicked and tried to stand (or escape). His movements threw the tiny
plane into a roll. Both Quimby and the man were thrown out of their seats
(no seat belts yet) and they fell to their deaths.
Before becoming interested in aviation, HQ earned
her living as a journalist and was drama critic for Leslie's Weekly. She
moved to New York to work for Leslie's Illustrated Weekly as a drama critic
but also filed stories from Cuba, Mexico, Europe, and Egypt. Her writing
skills as well as an acquaintance with D. W. Griffith made her one of the
first female screenwriters, and she wrote seven films for Griffith.
B. 05-01-1881, May Massee - U.S. editor and children's literature
specialist
MM was the editor of The Booklist published
by the American Library Association(1913-1922). She organized the second
children's book publishing department in the world at Doubleday, and in
1933 founded, edited, and directed the Viking Press children's book department
1933-1960.
B. 05-01-1898, Anny Rosenberg Katan, M.D. - U.S. pioneer in psychoanalysis
for emotionally disturbed children
She taught child analysis at the School fo Medicine
of Western Reserve Universlity 1946-64.
She helped established the Cleveland psychoanalystic
Institute and the Cleveland Center for Research in Child Development.
An Austrian Jew, in 1939 Dr. Katan took refuge in
the Netherlands to avoid German persecution. After the Germans conquered
the Netherlands, using false papers, she went underground and was very
active in anti-fascist movement at the risk of her life.
At the recommendation of Dr. Anna Freud with whom
she'd studied, Dr. Katan moved to Cleveland, Ohio and began teaching at
Wester Reserve.
B. 05-01-1904(1900?), Valentina - fashion designer and costumer.
Valentina claimed credit for the bolero jacket, snoods, dolman sleeves,
and pleated skirts. She also claimed her parents were killed in the Russian
revolution and she escaped with only the family jewels.
B. 05-01-1905, Geraldine B. Zorbaugh - general counsel (1956),
vice-president and special assistant to the president of ABC, the highest
positions ever held by a woman in a major broadcast network to that time.
 B.
05-01-1909, Kate Smith - the number one American singer on radio and
television (1931-1947), so popular that it is almost impossible to compare
her to anyone today except Elvis (without the swooning).
FDR introduced her to the King of England as "Miss
Smith (who) is America."
Nineteen of her records sold over a million copies,
and she sold more war bonds during World War II than anyone else.
Her theme song was "When the Moon Comes over
the Mountain," but she is best known today for her rendition of "God
Bless America." In 1982 she was awarded the Presidential Medal of
Freedom.
She starred in a succession of highly popular radio
and tv shows as well as concerts.
B. 05-01-1912, Anna Pollack - British opera and concert mezzo-soprano.
One of her best roles was a strikingly modern rendition of Carmen, not
as a vamp but a freedom loving moving woman (feminist?)
She was noted as an actor and one of the most popular
singer of the Sadler Wells company who gave outstanding performances at
every outing. Her popularity was amazing.
B. 05-01-1916, Jane Jacobs - U.S. planner. JJ dissected the urban
expansion philosophies and claimed planner ignored the needs of people
for stylized buildings, streets, and recreation locations. JJ authored
The Economy of Cities (1969) and The Death and Life of Great
American Cities (1961)
B. 05-01-1917, Ann Kullmer - U.S. classical conductor.
Although she won the competition to qualify for a
scholarship to the Leipzig (Germany) Conservatory of Music for conducting,
the director refused to admit a woman until she could conduct a Ceser Frank
symphony from *memory*. (Many conductors can't conduct a Ceser Frank symphony
from the score.) Her primary conducting successes were in Europe.
B. 05-01-1924, Evelyn Boyd Granville - U.S. mathematician, one
of the first two African-American women to received a Ph.D. in mathematics.
B. 05-01-1933, Jane Danowitz - executive director of the Women'
s Campaign Fund, a bipartisan organization supporting pro-choice women
candidates.
JD explained, "We're the
beneficiaries of throwing the bums out. And there are many more male bums...
All the focus on Hillary Clinton reflects the ambivalence of American society
to the profound social changes that are now under way.
``As Americans struggle to come to grips with the
altered role of women, it's reflected and magnified at a time of political
decision.''
B. 05-01-1936, Delores Goodwin Kelley - Maryland state senator
1995- , and member house of delegates 1991-94.
B. 05-01-1939, Judy Collins - U.S. singer.
JC was one of the leading lights of the folk music
craze of the 1960s, has continued unabated into the 1990s with her clear
soprano voice and her politics unchanged. She remains an uncompromising
liberal and feminist.
(We witnessed her rendition of "Amazing Grace"
a capella at an outdoor concert in 1996. It was so utterly beautiful and
soaring that it held a Black gospel choir speechless - hesitant to join
in the chorus! )
JC is noted for giving singers and songwriters a helping
hand with their careers by featuring their songs: Bob Dylan and Gordon
Lightfoot and especially Joni Mitchell's "Both sides now."
B. 05-01-1940 Mason, Bobbie Ann - U.S. short-story writer and
novelist known for her evocation of rural Kentucky life.
B. 05-01-1945 Rita Coolidge - U.S. pop singer.
Event 05-01-1952: Marine Colonel Katherine A. Towle, the first
Director of Women Marines, was retired under the statutory age provision
of the Women's Armed Services Integration Act of 1948 that required retirement
for colonels at age 55.
A special sunset parade was held in her honor and
for the first time in the history, a platoon of women Marines joined the
contingent of men Marines who passed in review.
Event 05-01-1953: Colonel Julia E. Hamblet, was appointed the
third Director of the Marine Corps Women's Reserve.
 B.
05-01-1979, Jennifer Botterill - U.S. athlete.
JB was a member of the women's national hockey team
that won the Olympic gold.
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QUOTES DU JOUR
JONES, MOTHER:
"Get it right, I'm not
a humanitarian. I'm a hell-raiser."
-- Mother Jones
PAYNE, ETHEL:
"Age is not a handicap.
Age is nothing but a number. It is how you use it."
-- Ethel Payne
ROOSEVELT, FRANKLIN DELANO:
FDR who was born of moderate wealth and one of the privileged class became,
against almost all odds, a liberal. An extremely pragmatic president, hIs
was a record of many contradictions in terrible times of trouble including
the Great Depression (more than 25% of the working men and women of the
nation out of work) and World War II.
He was often accused of being a "betrayer
of his class," by supporting working people.
Perhaps for good reason....
In a speech President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave before
the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), Roosevelt opened by saying:
"greetings fellow immigrants."
(For those who aren't aware, the DAR is an
exclusive organization that was at the time limited to WHITE people who
can trace their ancestry to people living in the U.S. at the time of the
American Revolution. Anyone whose immigrated to the U.S. after the revolution
- and thus the United States - is not eligible. for DAR membership.)
THORNE-SMITH, COURTNEY:
"My therapist said
something once that I replay in my head every morning when I get dressed.
I had been complaining that a certain pair of pants didn't fit me anymore,
and she said, 'What is this stuff people say
about, I don't fit into my clothes? You're not supposed to fit into
your clothes. They're supposed to fit you!'
"In other words,
you know those teeny, tiny jeans you bought after that horrible breakup
when you couldn't eat anything but an occasional Popsicle for two weeks?
Give them to Goodwill so that the 12-year-old girl they were made for can
wear them!"
-- Courtney Thorne-Smith
is an actress who dieted and starved herself for years to fit into the
image of what a woman should look like - according to male directors, photographers,
and producers. She finally realized that gaunt was not healthy.
"I feel proud of trying
to set my own standards instead of manipulating my body to fit into someone
else's idea of what is acceptable. There will always be those who criticize
me no matter what I look like. I can't win that fight, so my goal is to
stop listening to them. After all, it's my own body I'm beating up, and
why would I want to do that?"
STANTON, ELIZABETH CADY:
"Among the clergy we
find our most violent enemies, those most opposed to any change in woman's
position."
-- Elizabeth Cady Stanton,
from Rufus K. Noyes, Views of Religion.
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