The Liz Library presents Irene Stuber's Women of Achievement


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August 15
WOMEN OF ACHIEVEMENT AND HERSTORY

Compiled and Written by Irene Stuber.
08-15 TABLE of CONTENTS:

Women's Rage

Played That "Very Masculine Instrument," the Violin

Brought Russian Ballet Techniques to London

One of the Finest Still Life Painters of the 18th Century

Nancy Wake - Australian journalist

Absolute Favorite Cookie of All-Time

Won Ceres Medal

DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and EVENTS

QUOTES by Anon, J.S. Mill, Molly Ivins, Sandra Day O'Connor.


Women's Rage Is Acted out in Violent Outbursts, Anguished Crying, or Frightened Withdrawal

"As women and Third World people discover that emulation, as a process of 'liberation based on self-hatred,' is 'simply a capitulation to another side of enslavement,' they react against the culture of oppression through forms of rage. This rage stage which is an important aspect of self-liberation can be seen in Third World groups which sometimes destroy property and homes in a rejection of the alien culture.
      "Out of such rage and frustration come ghetto riots, rebellions against 'colonial acculturation,' or forms of rebellion which Ruether describes as acting out 'the underside of male dread.'"

"Some women express their rage by joining groups such as SC*M, BITCH, or WITCH. With most women, however, the rage is acted out in violent outbursts, anguished crying, or frightened withdrawal as they see the worid into which they have been enculturated crumbling about them.
      "Along with this rage, despair, and rejection of the oppressive superstructures comes a new search for cultural identity as groups begin to look to one another for support, and join together in a communal search for a usable future. As we have seen, this process of individual and group self-affirmation is an attempt to find a still living and evolving past which can help to shape the future in community with others. Third World groups return to their own national heritage to assert their sense of cultural worth and reject the oppressive standards of the outsider...

"Women not only seek identity in history but begin to seek out their sisters so that, in community, they can build a strong feminist culture which supports the ideas and actions of those who do not think persons are inferior because of their sex. Here the emphasis is on vertical support from the past and from women of the past, as well as horizontal support from sisters close by, and in every part of the globe...

"Efforts are made to integrate both mind and body in a new whole person who can act out a new way of life...
      "The open-ended goal of the process of consciousness-raising is the discovery of new awarenass and ability to act together with others to change both infrastructures and superstructures that deprive people of a usable future. As Ruether describes it:
      'In and through these various social interactions with oppression, however, I believe that all the rebellious groups in post-classical, post-Christian society are seeking a new communal personhood...'

"Because this is a human process of dialectic, it must include a continuing search for new possibilities of life in which the oppressor and the oppressed are included. This means the development of new forms of dialogue and community as well as new consciousness.
      "Petty Way describes this continuing search in her own ministry by saying, that the 'authority of my ministry is in my rooted participation as a free and emerging person engaged in examing the processes of human existence, testing out their principles and traditions, experiencing the possibilities of new creations of persons, institutions and cultures'..."
            -- Excerpts from Human Liberation in a Feminist Perspective - a Theology by Letty M. Russell. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1974. Dr. Russell is a graduate of Wellesley College, Harvard Divinity School, and Union Theological Seminary (NY).
      [WOAH comment - one may find pre-echoes of profound popular feminist writings of the next wave in Dr. Russell's work. It is well worth hunting down. It is a prize in our personal collection.]

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Ranked with Men who Played That "Very Masculine Instrument," the Violin

Camilla Urso - French-born U.S. violinist during the last quarter of 19th century was one of the first to be ranked with men in the use of the "very masculine instrument," the violin.
      By 1900 women violinists were commonplace, but it was because of women like CU who broke the gender line.
      Urso was a child prodigy whose first performance was greeted with laughter - a small girl with such a big instrument, but the scoffers applauded.
      Her family moved to Paris in order for the eight-year-old Camilla to attend the Paris Conservatory, Her mother had to take in washing to support them.

Camilla, after an audition, became the first person under ten to be enrolled at the conservatory and the first female. She won a tour to the United States at age ten and when she arrived in New York with her family, the tour and the money had evaporated with the promoter.
      Italian contralto Madame Marietta Alboni heard about the family's plight and arranged a benefit concert. Engagements followed throughout the U.S. and abruptly in 1855 at age 13 she stopped playing and retired to all kinds of speculation.
      At 20 she resumed her career and she again toured the United States to reviews that ranged from
"simply magnificent" to "a marvel of art." She returned to France, married, and continued to tour. In addition to the standard classical fare, she performed the bravura works of Paganini and Tartini.
      She only played from memory. CU returned to the United States and toured and was made an honorary member of the Philadelphia Philharmonic which, of course, had no women members. She maintained an exhausting schedule. For example in 1879 her company held 200 concerts in 15 states, two territories, and Canada - traveling 15,000 miles.
      A critic wrote of her in the last decade of the 19th century said,
"She belongs in the rank of the foremost of living artists. In her case the idea of sex, which so often obtrudes itself and modifies ciritical judgment, is never thought of... she does not play like either man or woman, but like a sound, noble, earnest, and musician."
      She herself said that women as a rule play better than men with greater expression and certainly better than the average orchestral musician. She said, however, that her life was one of hard work for not enough reward.
      At the time first-rate men violinists earned more than $150,000 a year by today's standards.
"No wonder," said one writer, "that women were looking forward to this field, and no wonder that men preferred to keep it to themselves."
      CU never amassed enough money to retire because she, of course, did not earn the money men violinists did. During her poverty-stricken last years performed in vaudeville - and was soundly criticized for it. She died broke on January 20, 1902.

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Brought Russian Ballet Techniques to London

Vera Volkova, c 1904, was a Russian-Anglo ballet teacher who after a brief ballet career in Russia opened a studio in London. She influenced the development of major talent for the Sadler's Wells and later helped modernize and improve the Danish ballet.{acedemic American Encyclopedia}

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Vallayer-Coster Considered One of the Finest Still Life Painters of the 18th Century

Anne Vallayer-Coster - French artist lived 1744-1818.
      She was the daughter of a working mother who ran the family goldsmithing business after being left a widow.
      AVC, however, did not follow her mother's footsteps but became an painter and is best known as a still life painter of great talent. She was accepted as a member of the Academie (Acad&eactute;mie) Royale in 1770. Nothing is known about her artistic training.
      Although praised for her still lifes, her attempts at portrait work was derided in a manner that spoke to her sex more than her work. Today she is considered one of the finest still life artists of the 18th century, the other two being men.

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Nancy Wake - Australian journalist

Nancy Wake sabotaged targets inside France on D-Day ( the day of the invasion of France by Allied forces) and was instrumental in the destruction of the German headquarters at Monthucon, France.
      NW joined the resistance under the name of "Lucienne Carlier" after the fall of France to the Germans in World War II.
      She had trained in Britain and parachuted back into France to sabotage important German centers.

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Absolute Favorite Cooklie of All-Time

In 1933 Ruth Wakefield invented the absolute favorite cookie of all-time - the chocolate chip cookie. She added chocolate to a known cookie batter.
      Like most inventions, it was simple after it was done.
      Yummy!!!!

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Won Ceres Medal

Dechhen Wangmo Wangchuck - head of the Bhutan's Ministry of Development which oversees the nation's health, education, agriculture, and public works. A princess, she was a United Nations' Ceres Medal recipient for humanitarian works.

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08-15 DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and EVENTS

DIED 08-15-1369, Philippa of Hainaut - Queen of England. Philippa is credited for keeping her husband Edward III of England on the throne through her good deeds and care for the common folk. She had 12 children yet often accompanied the marrauding Edward on his military expeditions.

B. 08-15-1701, Marie Marguerite Dufros De La Gesmerais, known as La Venerable D'Youville. MMG, widowed, was instrumental in founding the Order of the Grey Sisters and with it the General Hospital of Montreal, Canada.

B. 08-15-1787, Eliza Lee Cabot Follen - U.S. author of children's books. She was a prominent abolitionist.

B. 08-15-1810, Louise Colet - French poet and novelist whose personal life is always emphasized by HIStorians and her literary works, although impressive, are given no great import.
      It would be as if Gustabe Flaubert's sometimes sordid personal life would be emphasized over his literary accomplishments.
      She also conducted literary solons that brought the cream of intellectual society together in Paris. Her relationship with Flaubert inspired him to write The Muse although her novel Lui (Him)(1859) denudes the great man.

B, 08-15-1815, Anna Ella Carroll - Anna Ella Carroll was born on August 29, 1815, to Gov. Thomas King Carroll (1830) and the former Juliana Stevenson at the family's plantation home, Kingston Hall, in Somerset County, Maryland. Carroll took an early interest in intellectual subjects and her father's political career. She became his political aide and was likely tutored in the law by him. During the 1850s Carroll became active in Maryland and national politics, writing books and political pamphlets on behalf of former Pres. Millard Fillmore, Gov. Thomas H. Hicks of Maryland, and former Congressman John Minor Botts, among others.
        After Abraham Lincoln's election to the presidency in 1860, Carroll actively aided Hicks and the Lincoln administration in keeping Maryland loyal, writing numerous influential articles and pamphlets in the press and under an agreement with the administration. In the fall of 1861, she worked with secret agent Judge Lemuel Evans gathering intelligence in St. Louis. Based on an interview with a riverboat pilot working with the Union's Mississippi gunboat fleet, Carroll submitted a memorandum to Lincoln, through Asst. Secty. of War Thomas A. Scott, that advocated changing the planned invasion of the Confederacy from the Mississippi to the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers. Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck was planning the same movement at the time, unbeknownst to Lincoln. Evidence indicates that on the advice of Sen. Benjamin F. Wade, Lincoln appointed Edwin Stanton as secretary of war in January 1862 to implement Carroll's Tennessee River plan. When Gen.-in-Chief George B. McClellan sent Halleck information that the Confederates were reinforcing from the east, Halleck ordered Brig. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and Flag Office Andrew Hull Foote to immediately move on Fort Henry on the Tennessee River on January 30. The night before Asst. Secretary Scott was sent west to mobilize reinforcements for Halleck. Thus Carroll's submission was critical to providing needed reinforcements for Grant and in gaining Stanton the appointment as secretary of war. This advance resulted in the capture of Confederate Forts Henry and Donelson in the first weeks of February 1862. These are considered the first "real" victories for the Union in the Civil War.
        During the remainder of the war, Carroll continued to write on behalf of the administration and lobbied Lincoln to establish a colony for freedmen in Belize. During the postwar years, Carroll's life was largely consumed trying to gain monies still owed her by the government for her wartime publications. In this she was supported by suffrage and women's groups. After twenty years of congressional hearings, during which every military committee but one voted in her favor, no bill passed the Congress. Carroll died on February 19, 1894, an invalid supported by her sister and funds raised by the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) and the Woman?s Relief Corps (WRC). She is buried in the cemetery of Old Trinity Church, the oldest Episcopal Church in America, in Dorchester County, Maryland. AEC-MWHC [Material submitted by Kay Larson, author of Great Necessities]

B. 08-15-1816, Ann Pamela Cunningham - U.S. southern club activist who organized and supervised the all-woman task of purchasing Mount Vernon as a national monument for posterity.
      Neither the State of Virginia and the U.S. government were not interested in preserving the home of George Washington (actually the home of Martha Custis whose marriage to Washington moved the property to HIS name in the ways of the time).
      In addition to raising enough money, APC had to overcome the social prejudices against women engaging in any activities except home and church. She also had to fight the political climate of the times which did not revere the "Founding Fathers" as we do today.

B. 08-15-1835, Maria Deraismes - French women's rights activist.

B. 08-15-1841, Julia Strudwick Tutwiler - U.S. educator and activist.
      JST founded and headed what became Livingston University. She got state support for what became Alabama College, and headed prison reform efforts in Alabama. Her poem about her beloved Alabama became the lyrics of the state song.

B. 08-15-1858, Emma Calvé - French soprano noted for her sensual portrayal of Carmen. She debuted at the Metropolitan Opera in 1893 after a dazzling career at the La Scala in Italy and Opéra Comique in Paris. EC was noted as "a soprano of individual and luscious timbre."
      She was also recognized as a great actor, a rarity in opera. Her autobiography Sous tous les ciels j'ai chanté (1940; I've Sung under Every Sky). My Life was edited by Andrew Farkas and translated by by Gilda Rosamond (1922; repr. 1977).
      She was named as a lesbian in the "Famous or Distinguished Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals: A List of Names," Gay & Lesbian Task Force, American Library Association.

B. 08-15-1858, E(dith) Nesbit - British children's author, novelist, and poet. She wrote more than 60 books, mostly for children.

B. 08-15-1860, Florence Kling Harding - U.S. political wife. FKH is often credited with inspiring her husband's political career that moved him from a the position of a small city editor to President of the United States.
      She was known to insiders as the Duchess.
      She was steadfast at his side as the handsome president was accused of various affairs, including a daughter with a younger woman.
      However, insiders say that the corruption of his administration revealed in the Teapot Dome scandals infuriated her. Rumors persist that she caused her husband's sudden death to save the nation embarrassment in the unfolding scandal.
      There is absolutely no proof of such a thing and a nurse who cared for President Harding during his last illness said it was a natural death.

B. 08-15-1879, Ethel Barrymore - U.S. actor and women's rights advocate. EB was the shining jewel of the Royal Family of the Theatre (Colt- Drew- Barrymore) with her distinctive style, voice and wit.
      She was reigning queen of the stage for more than 50 years. EB won the 1944 Academy Award for best supporting actress for her work in the movie None but the Lonely Heart.
      During her Broadway career, she was accepted in New York society and along with a number of socialites, she helped form a woman's club in New York City. It was meant to be a place for women to gather away from their husbands and fathers. EB was very independent and was noted for several close friendships with women.
      Her mother Georgiana Drew was a noted comedienne and her grandmother Louisa Lane Drew who primarily raised EB was an actor and managerof the Arch Street Theatre in Philadelphia.
      EB admired her mother a great deal and gave her credit for many of her best techniques. After her father's remarriage she was transferred to her Canadian relatives and went on the stage to earn her living. She married and bore three children between various plays and tours.
      EB spearheaded an actors' strike that got better terms for actors from Broadway producers. She divorced in 1923 and never remarried although she was known to have a number of relationships with women.
      Because of ill health she had become financially destitute in the early 1930s before radio work led her to character roles and her memorable stage performance of Miss Moffat in The Corn is Green.
      Many records give her DOB as 08-15-1879 but her birth record in Philadelphia gives 08-16-1879. Her autobiography: Memories: An Autobiography (1955).

B. 08-15-1882, Gisela Marie Augusta Richter - U.S. classical archaeologist and museum curator.

B. 08-15-1883, Louise Platt Hauck - U.S. author who no one knows under her real name. LPH published more than 70 historial novels under the names of Peter Ash, Louise Landon, Lane Archer, and Jean Randall.

B. 08-15-1885, Edna Ferber - U.S. author and Pulitzer Prize winning novelist for So Big (1924).
      Her books Show Boat, Cimarron, Saratoga Trunk, Giant, and Ice Palace were all made into popular Hollywood movies that distorted her pro-woman, feminist messages.
      Tagged today as a "woman's writer," her works are being dismissed as fluff pieces, but they all contain serious themes and accurate portrayals of the time and place.
      Her works centered around a pantheon of strong women which almost guaranteed she'd never receive critical success especially since her woman characters usually triumphed in the end. The times demanded that women who broke the customs of dutiful wife or daughter, or made an independent life must die or be remorseful and repentant at the end.
      One feminist writer said her strong female protagonists "testifies to her belief in female determination and autonomy."
      She was one of the top selling authors of her day and she earned fabulous amounts of money.

B. 08-15-1887, Marion Eugenie Bauer - U.S. classical composer, primarily of chamber music and piano concertos.
      MEB's mother was widowed and the sole suppprt of her five children. She was a professor languages. MEB was the first woman of the Executive Board of the U.S. section of the International Society for Contemporary Music.
      MEB was faculty member of Juilliard School of Music and of New York University for more than 25 years. Her Sun Splendor was the only composition written by a woman that was played during 25 years of concerts by the New York Philharmonic. MB's musical style was impressionist which gradually changed with more dissonance.
      Her compositions have not been performed since a fete at her retirement in 1951. The Women's Philharmonic in San Francisco is reviving many neglected women's works. (Check how little women's compositions are played by your favorite symphonic orchestras or on the radio - or how few women composers have had recordings made of their work. Interesting? What has music got to do with sex? Or is it prejudice?)
      MEB's sister was the noted music critic Emilie Frances Bauerwho died tragically. MEB was chosen to succeeded her.
      She formed an important collaboration with Ethel Peyser as together they wrote about music history in How Music Grew (1925) and How Opera Grew (1956) with several other volumes and many articles between.

B. 08-15-1888, Francis White Diehl - president of the National Council of Women of the United States (1946).

B. 08-15-1896, Gerty Teresa Radnitz Cori - Czech-American biochemist, first American woman to win the Nobel Prize for medicine and physiology, an honor she shared with her husband.
      The Nobel review said "their discovery of a phosphate-containing form of the simple sugar glucose, and its universal importance to carbohydrate metabolism, led to an understanding of hormonal influence on the interconversion of sugars and starches in the animal organism and earned them (with Bernardo Houssay) the Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology in 1947."
      Several times during their lengthy research together, GTRC was told she would be dismissed from her job if she didn't stop collaborating with her husband; she was told that she was holding her husband's career back because American men did not work with their wives.
      However, they continued their collaboration. Carl Cori said of their remarkable collaboration when the received the Nobel. "Our efforts have been largely complementary, and one without the other would not have gone so far..."
      In 1931 the Coris moved to Washington University, St. Louis, where they joined the department of pharmacology where Carl assumed the post of Professor of Pharmacology and later Professor of Biochemistry. Gerty Cori held the post of research associate from 1931 to 1943 and that of research associate professor from 1943 to 1947. In 1946 they moved together from the department of pharmacology to that of biochemistry and in 1947 she was FINALLY made a full professor - after she was awarded the Nobel prize.
      Six Eventual Nobel Laureates received training in the Coris laboratory at Washington University.
      Their Nobel biography reads in part:

      "Their early work in Buffalo on metabolism in tumor cells had led them into a program of investigation of carbohydrate metabolism in general. In a series of papers in the 1920s and 1930s they published their findings on the influence of the hormones epinephrine and insulin on carbohydrate metabolism; on the mechanism whereby liver glycogen is converted to glucose; on the conversion of muscle glycogen to lactate; on their discovery in 1936 of glucose-1-phosphate (sometimes called the Cori ester), an intermediate phase in glycogen conversion; on their discovery in 1938 of the catalytic enzyme phosphorylase, which plays a central role in the process; and on other aspects of the process. Their elaboration of glycogen metabolism led to their dramatic synthesis of glycogen in the test tube in 1939. These discoveries brought them the 1947 Nobel Prize" From 1950 she sat on the board of directors of the National Science Foundation. The Coris' subsequent work led to the complete elucidation of the molecular structure of glycogen in 1952. Gerty Cori also contributed greatly to the understanding of glycogen storage diseases of children...
      "The Coris were members of the American Society of Biological Chemists, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Chemical Society and the American Philosophical Society. They were presented jointly with the Midwest Award (American Chemical Society) in 1946 and the Squibb Award in Endocrinology in 1947. In addition, Gerty Cori received the Garvan Medal (1948), the St. Louis Award (1948), the Sugar Research Prize (1950), the Borden Award (1951) and honorary Doctor of Science degrees from Boston University (1948), Smith College (1949), Yale (1951), Columbia (1954), and Rochester (1955).
      The couple had met as students as Gerty was gaining her medical degree. The couple emigrated to the U.S. in 1922 and became U.S. citizens in 1928. They had one son.

B. 08-15-1898, Lillian Carter was known as Miss Lillian during her son Jimmy's presidency. Ms. Lillian served with the Peace Corps in India 1966-68 when she was 68-70 years of age. Her son called her the most liberal woman in Georgia. She was a feisty role model for older women.

B. 08-15-1899, Martha Foley - U.S. editor. MF co-edited influential magazine Story that gave many yet-to-be-prominent authors their start. MF edited the Best American Short Stories yearly collections for 35 years.

B. 08-15-1902, Georgette Heyer - English author of nearly 60 books mostly exploring women's lives in the Regency period. GH is one of the largest selling authors of all time.

B. 08-15-1912, Dame Wendy Hiller - U.K. actor. WH was a remarkable English stage and motion-picture actress who was the lead or featured actor in more than 40 stage plays and a dozen films.

B. 08-15-1912, Julia Child - U.S. cooking expert, author, and television personality.
      JC won a Peabody Award in 1965 and an Emmy in 1966 for cooking shows that centered around traditional French cuisine. But the shows became a general viewing audience favorite as she conducted them in her inimitable aplomb and down-to-earth methods.
      (She mixed with her hands when necessary. She used an old-fashioned bottle opener to open oysters. She made mistakes and dropped things and recovered with aplomb. She was a cook who obviously knew how to cook and was familiar with a real kitchen. The practical and delicious preparation of food was paramount to her.)
      She worked in the Office of Strategic Services in Ceylon where she met her husband. She followed him to Paris when he was assigned a U.S. Foreign Service post and she began to explore her love of cooking at various Parisian cooking schools including the fabled Cordon Bleu cooking school. She met her first publishing partners Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle, both gourmets and cooks of reputation. Their books became best sellers. She and her beloved husband had moved back to the U.S. and settled in Cambridge. She was asked to appear at the TV station that would become part of the National Public Radio system and she was such a success (refreshingly knowledgeable and down to earth) that they asked her to put together a test series in 1962.
      She was large and tall; she was not pretty; she wheezed; SHE was WONDERFUL! The program was grabbed by educational TV stations throughout the country as people of all ages and interests watched it as much for its entertainment as education.
      She went on to write other books demystifying cooking in general and French gourmet cooking in particular.
      She has enthralled generations of Americans with her TV shows, her books - and if you can, do find the tapes of her earlier shows. They are pure joy. Almost 40 years later and she is still on TV - a true American icon.
      Bon Appetite!

B. 08-15-1915, Signe Hasso - German-U.S. film actor.

B. 08-15-1923, Rose Marie - U.S. actor best known for her role in the Dick Van Dyke TV series. Her trademark was a bowed ribbon in her hair above her ear.

B. 08-15-1924, Phyllis Schlafly - ultra-conservative U.S. political activist and author. She was the front woman held up by rightwing and business interests in their successful fight against the (women's) Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) campaign from 1972 to 1982. She publicized half truths and disingenuous rumors such as claiming that the amendment would force women to share their public lavatories with men. She was shrill and admitted that she passed on lies.
      She opposes feminists and condemns the idea of women leading independent lives although she is the epitome of both. She spent her life being independent and making a high profile career and fortune while promoting the conservative Republican ideals of repressed and controlled womanhood. She is the founder of the Eagle Forum which advocates the 19th century repression for women.
      [Sorry, WOAH cannot be impartial about this hypocrite! She grew rich while poor women still don't have equal rights under U.S. law for equal wages or human rights.]

B. 08-15-1926, Georgiann Johnson - U.S. actor.

B. 08-15-1931, Janice Rule - U.S. actor.

B. 08-15-1943, Barbara Bouchet Reichenberg - Czech actor who starred in the James Bond movie Casino Royale.

B. 08-15-1944, Linda Ellerbee - U.S. journalist and TV personality. She authored a book about the inside machinations of TV journalism that badly damaged her career. She has been able to rebuild her career and recently had a Saturday morning show. In a well-publicized battle, she appears to have beaten breast cancer. She is noted for the tag line, "and so it goes."

Event 08-15-1944: the hospital ship Sanctuary is the first to U.S. naval vessel to have women as part of its company. Two officers and 60 enlisted personnel were women.

B. 08-15-1946, Kathyrn Whitmore - U.S. politician. KW was the first mayor of Houston, Texas, who was also a woman. KW served four terms.
      A changing economy, and maybe the fact that she appointed a woman police chief who became pregnant, damaged her career. (Watson was a very good police chief, but they got rid of her too. Watson was the first police chief of a major city in the history of the world to bear a child while in office. She wore maternity uniforms!)

B. 08-15-1947, Gertrude Mell - Swedish organist, teacher, and composer who wrote her first composition when she started piano lessons at five.
      GM had her own TV and radio shows and taught.
      She quit it all to go to sea as an able seaman (sic) before gaining her masters license. She explained that she finds being at sea gives her more time to compose and offers her greater inspiration.

B. 08-15-1949, Ann Ryerson - U.S. actor.

Event 08-15-1950: the dogma of the bodily assumption of the Virgin Mary, into heaven is declared by the Roman Catholic Church.

B. 08-15-1950, Tess Harper - U.S. actor.

B. 08-15-1960, Maureen "Peanut" Louie Harper - U.S. tennis player.

Event 08-15-1970: Patricia Palinkas plays with the Orlando Panthers to become the first woman to take part in a professional football game. She drops a pass and is ridiculed by her teammates and the press. Dropped passes by men are common and are seldom made an issue over unless they are for a championship.

Event 08-15-1975: Joanne Little acquitted of murder charges in a sensational case.

DIED 08-15-1991: Marietta Tree - member of the United Nations Commission of Human Rights.

Event 08-15-1993: in a startling self-portrait that the New York Times Magazine had the courage to print, photographer Matuschka shows her mastectomy scar in a dramatic cover photo. She wanted to deliver the message, "You can't look away anymore."

NOTE: Our thanks to Barbara Wardenburg as one of the many women who continue to send WOAH notes and clippings about these wonderful role-model women. We are richer for their living.

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QUOTES DU JOUR



Anon:
      "A man can be an honest man, but a woman to be an honest woman must be married after an illicit affair."

MILL, J. S.:
      "The principle which regulates the existing social relations between the two sexes--the legal subordination of one sex to the other - is wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement... it ought to be replaced by a principle of perfect equality, admitting no power or privilege on the one side, nor disability on the other."
            -- Mill proclaimed that inequality of women under the law was derived from antiquated rule by the strongest, that it amounted to slavery, and that it was kept in place by indoctrination of women to believe they were inferior beings. Under such repressive circumstances, it was impossible for women to recognize the true extent of their own capabilities. A strong proponent of women's education, Mill attributed the lesser achievements of women to their being barred from equal education:

      "The only educated women are the self-educated."

      Therefore, it was inconceivable that they could compete with men in arenas in which they had been denied knowledge. Mill also recognized the greater personal demands placed on women that deter them from creative work.

      "There are other reasons... that help to explain why women remain behind men, even in the pursuits which are open to both. For one thing, very few women have time for them"...
      "Independently of the regular offices of life which devolve upon a woman, she is expected to have her time and faculties always at the disposal of everybody. If a man has not a profession to exempt him from such demands, still, if he has a pursuit, he offends nobody by devoting his time to it; occupation is received as a valid excuse for his not answering to every casual demand which may be made on him...
      [However, a woman] must always be at the beck and call of somebody, generally of everybody. If she has a study or a pursuit, she must snatch any short interval which accidentally occurs to be employed in it."
            -- J. S. Mill

IVINS, MOLLY:
      "Many people pay personal trainers to get them to do right, and the rest of us have mothers."
            -- Molly Ivins, columnist, 07-03-98.

O'CONNOR, SANDRA DAY:
      "The dilemma is this: If society does not recognize the fact that only woman can bear children, then 'equal treatment' ends up being unequal. On the other hand, if society recognizes pregnancy as requiring special solicitude, it is a slipperly slope back to the 'protectionist' legislation that barred women from the workplace... I would hope that [the next] generation of attorneys will find new ways to balance family and professional responsibilities between men and women... in a way... that frees both women and men from traditional role limitations."
            -- U. S. Associate Supreme Court Justice, Sandra Day O'Connor.

      Sandra Day O'Connor's solutions on
      "How to solve the latchkey kid syndrome:
      "1. Stay at home mother who is there 24-hours a day;
      "2. Revamp school hours and curriculum so that children are kept in the direct school environment for after-school sports, club and other activities so that their day actually ends at 6 p.m. when the mother would be returning home from work.
      "3. [Sandra Day O'Connor's personal method] Hiring people to take her children directly from school to sports and other activities so that they come home at the same time their mother does."


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© 1990-2006 Irene Stuber, Hot Springs National Park, AR 71902. Originally web-published at http://www.undelete.org/. We are indebted to Irene Stuber for compiling this collection and for granting us permission to make it available again. The text of the documents may be freely copied for nonprofit educational use. Except as otherwise noted, all contents in this collection are © 1998-2009 the liz library.  All rights reserved. This site is hosted and maintained by the liz library.

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