| 05-26 TABLE of CONTENTS:
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and
EVENTS
QUOTE by
Adrienne Rich.
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
 Photo
by Dorothea Lange:
Sharecropper, Hinds County, Mississippi
The very shocking Lady Mary Wortley Montagu first
advocated inoculation against smallpox in England, a process she learned
during her stay in Turkey as the British ambassador's wife.
But few in England would use her method although the
smallpox immunization had been used in Asia and the Middle East for many,
many years. George Washington inoculated his troops during the American
revolution. Live smallpox vaccines could kill and gradually those
in the English countryside realized that children exposed to cowpox - a
milder form of smallpox spread by cattle - were immune to the more serious
disease, thus setting the stage for Edward Jenner's famous inoculation
of a young boy and medical fame. Baptized 05-26-1689, Montagu was a brilliant
writer noted for her essays, plays, and poetry, but especially for her
letters, including the 52 Turkish embassy letters.
She deserted her husband after he was reposted to
England because she wasn't ready to settle into oblivion and boredom with
an older man. She traveled widely, and had several lovers.
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05-26 DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and EVENTS
B. 05-26-1881, Julia Catherine Stimson, superintendent of U.S. Army
Nurse Corps (1919- 1937) and director of nursing for the American forces
in Europe during World War I.
B. 05-26-1895, Dorothea Lange, one of the great photographers of
human emotion. Her photos of the Great Dust Bowl and the effects of
the Depression on families is one of the greatest recordings of human suffering
and dignity ever made. She used her camera as a sociologist would use words.
Her photo "Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California,
taken in 1936 hangs in the Library of Congress and is considered one of
the 50 best photographs of the preceding half-century.
Another of her great series documented the crushing
poverty in the deep south rural areas. The photo above is self-explanatory
as are most of her photos.
B. 05-26-1909, Helen Eugenie Moore Anderson, U.S.ambassador to Denmark
(1949), the first U.S. women to hold the rank of ambassador. Previously,
women in diplomatic postings held no office higher than minister. (Ruth
Bryan Rohde was minster to Denmark 1933-36, Mrs. J. Borden Harriman Minister
to Norway 1937-41 (and did brilliant work with refugees), and Mrs. Perle
Mesta, envoy to Luxumbourg, 1949).
Anderson served in numerous other posts including
U.S. envoy to Bulgaria(1962), representative to the United Nations, and
later special assistant to the Secretary of State (1968-72). She was the
first American woman to sign a treaty with a foreign government when she
acted on behalf of the U.S. in agreements on commerce, friendship, and
navigation in 1951.
B. 05-26-1920, Peggy Lee, one of the great U.S. jazz singers,
stylists, and composers - known internationally as the musician's musician.
A national treasure, she was still performing into
her 70s to overflow audiences.
She sued Disney corporation for just compensation
for her work on the movie The Lady and the Tramp for which she got
only $3,500 for composing or co-composing all of the music, as well
as playing four of the major roles, and singing three of the hits.
She signed the contract before videos came into existence
and the case became celebrated for revealing film studio's inventive bookkeeping
methods that kept films from showing a profit. The courts awarded her $3.8
million. The film grossed $160 million with another $72 million from the
videos. Michael Eisner, the new president of Disney who collects up to
582 million dollars a year in salaries and bonuses fought the Lee suit
through the courts.
B. 05-26-1929, Mary Shuham Dore, champion of SIDS research. Dore
was born and reared in Walla Walla, attended Whitman College and moved
to Seattle to work for Frederick & Nelson department store. She married
[former legislator and Washington State Supreme Court Justice] Fred Dore
in 1956. Dore, who lost her fourth child, Christine, to SIDS in 1961, was
instrumental in raising money for SIDS research and starting one of the
nation's first foundations dedicated to searching for the causes of what
was then called crib death. Her other children include Jane Kuper, Frederick
"Rick" Dore, Teresa Busch, Tim Dore, and nationally reknowned
appellate attorney Margaret Dore.
She received the 2007 Sally Rodgers Award for Lifelong Achievement from
Whitman College. [Material for this excerpt was taken from
Seattle Times obituary of November 12, 2007]
B. 05-26-1938, Teresa Stratas, Canadian-born singer, actor, winner
of three Grammys and nominated for a Tony in 1987 for best actress in a
musical for her work in Rags.
B. 05-26-1951, Sally Ride, the first U.S. astronaut into space who
was also a woman. She was a crew member of the 7th and 13th space missions
in 1983 and 1984. Ride holds a Ph.D. in physics. As part of the commission
investigating the 1986 Challenger disaster, she declared the shuttle
to be unsafe and refused to go back into space until after it was radically
redesigned, claiming other astronauts felt the same way.
It was redesigned but she was never given another
space flight. After writing a report advocating the establishment of a
lunar base, she became head of the Space Institute of the University of
California (San Diego) in 1989.
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QUOTES DU JOUR
RICH, ADRIENNE:
"I believe that every
woman's soul is haunted by the spirits of earlier women who took risks
and resisted - as women today are fighting their rapists and batterers."
--
Adrienne Rich, U.S. poet and feminist
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