| 10-05 TABLE of CONTENTS:
Maya Lin Designer From T\the Heart
Notes That Illuminate the Times
Black Women Medical Pioneers
Birth Control Was Practiced - Always
DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and
EVENTS
QUOTES by Marianne
Williamson, U.S. Supreme Court, Leslie McIntyre, and Ursula LeGuin.
Maya Lin Designer From the Heart
Tiny, Maya Ling Lin is a
woman of amazing reserve, self control, and dignity - as well as an architectural
genius.
Ml was still an architectural student at Yale University
when her professor asked all of his students to submit designs for the
competition to choose a fitting memorial to Americans killed in Viet Nam.
She visited the proposed site for the monument and
later said of it, "you couldn't desecrate
that land." In one direction is the Lincoln
Memorial and in the Washington Memorial.
Her simple design of a wall fading into the distance
of a small valley was chosen the best of 1,420 entries by a committee of
Nam veterans. However, it was soon condemned as a "degrading
ditch, a wall of shame" and even worse...
"We can't have our memorial built by
a gook."
Multi-millionare H. Ross
Perot flew veterans to Washington by the planeload to protest Lin's design.
He almost get enough support to erect a traditional statue of heroic men
with an American flag situated in the center of the wall.
A compromise was reached and Frederick Hart's statue
- which had finished third in the competition Lin won - was erected at
the entrance to the area where the wall was built, but the wall itself
was not changed.
The dedication was a 48-hour vigil during which the
names of the 58,000 dead and missing men soldiers listed on the wall were
read. Not only was the wall dedicated without once mentioning Maya Ying
Lin's name, but she was not even invited to attend!
Even the cover of dedication program had Hart's statue
pictured, not the wall. . .and yet within a few months the wall had become
and remains one of the most honored and moving memorials in our nation's
history.
To come to that wall is like seeing the waves of black
granite headstones reaching on and on... then seeing your living self reflected
on the shiny black stone over the names of our dead incised in it has the
viewer become one with the memorial - an experience that brings tears in
just remembering.
A rededication was held a number of years after the
first dedication in what some called the veteran's and national apology
to the designer. This time Maya Lin was invited and she spoke without rancor
and with dignity - continuing her amazing dignity. She has never once referred
to the design controversy nor the attacks of her ethnic background with
bitterness.
Lin also designed the 1989 Civil Rights Memorial
in Birmingham, Alabama, where viewers' tears become part of the monument...
The fingers of viewers trace the important dates and personages of the
Black Civil Rights movement through a light coating of moving water.
She then 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.
MLL's next major project was the memorial in Seneca
Falls, New York, where viewers step down into the memorial as a symbolic
honoring of the women who birthed the women's movement in America.
Water rolls gently, like tears of gratitude, over
the names of the brave women who defied social and legal convention to
sign the Sentiment of Rights at their convention in the 1848 - the
beginning of women's battle for full human rights. In 1994 MLL's translucent
clock, Eclipsed Time was installed in the ceiling of Penn Station
in New York City. It has been described as looking much like a flying saucer
with the 4.3-m (14-ft)-wide elliptical frosted glass clock illuminated
from above. A metal disk, moves slowly across the glowing oval, casting
an ever-changing shadow on the numerals below with 12:00 being a total
eclipse.
ML also designs great modern houses as well as having
designed the interior of a Black cultural museum in New York.
One of her most unusual non-architectural projects
was a free-form design of glass pellets in shades of blue that were poured
into ???? design on the wrap-around balcony of an art institute. It was
stunning! One of her major artistic direction has been in the way glass
breaks...
Maya Ying Lin's mother was a literature professor
and her father a ceramist and dean of fine arts at Ohio University at Athens.
Her aunt also studied architecture at Yale.
Maya Lin who was born 10-05-1959 in the small city
of Athens, Ohio. The author of Women of Achievement and Herstory has been
fortunate enough to have seen three of ML's creations. Go out of your way
to see them! There is an amazing movement and depth to her work that causes
one to look inward. Emotion is pulled from you, not forced on you.
A fascinating documentary of MLL's life won honors
and is available from several documentary film rental companies.
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Notes That Illuminate the Times
In 1976 the General Convention
of the Episcopal Church voted to ordain women, and recognized those already
"illegally" ordained. Jacqueline Means becomes the first woman
officially ordained an Episcopal priest in 1977.
LEST WE FORGET: It took until the federal Pregnancy
Discrimination Act of 1978 to guarantee non- discrimination in employment
on the basis of pregnancy. It prevents women employed by companies covered
by the act from losing seniority and other benefits (e.g.disability insurance)
due to pregnancy.
It was common (and still all too prevalent in less
obvious ways) for women not to be hired, or promoted due to employers'
contention that "they might get pregnant."
HIStorically, (even within the last half of the 20th
century) in many jobs women were automatically fired if they became pregnant
whether married or single. Until very recently school teachers were fired
for being pregnant (as if the children never saw a pregnant woman or didn't
know where babies came from). Until the 1940s, most women school teachers
lost their jobs when they married - the men teachers did not.
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Women Protested Racism in a Church
In 1858 in Newport, Rhode Island, a white parishioner
lost her right to sit in a church pew after inviting a black worshipper
to sit with her. She returned the next week with a camp stool and sat in
the aisle. The church, of course, had men-only deacons and members of the
board... all good Christians who believed in slavery and discrimination.
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Black Women Medical Pioneers
The first black woman to
receive medical training in the US was Rebecca Lee. She completed
a 17-week course at the New England Female Medical Collete in Boston.
Remember that in 1864 when Lee graduated, medical
knowledge was much less than it is today and training was necessarily briefer.
In 1870, Susan Smith McKinney Steward became
the first black woman to actually earn an M.D. She didn't just graduate;
she graduated valedictorian of her class at the New York Medical College
for Women. SSMS did post graduate studies at the Long Island College Hospital
as the only woman student.
Her practice was so large - treating both black and
white men, women and children - that she had to maintain two offices. In
1880, she co-founded a hospital for the women/girls who worked in the New
York area sweat shops.
SSMS raised several children from her two marriages
and was active in her church as choir master and organist. She died in
1918.
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Birth Control Was Practiced - Always
If one would believe the
historian's books, birth control was non-existent until very recent times.
Not so. Birth control was practiced since pre-history and recent readings
of ancient texts show an amazingly sophisticated knowledge of the human
reproductive system.
If birth control was never practiced, married or sexually
active women throughout history would have been pregnant all the
time.
However, it must be pointed out that several religions
specifically forbade a woman's use of any birth control methods and the
anti-birth control campaigns rolled into high gear when the Industrial
Revolution began and hordes of cheap labor were required.
On the farms, however, men were often willing to cooperate
since the woman's work was necessary and a pregnancy could mean starvation
for the entire family.
Example of two common methods are contained in the
United States Practical Receipt Book published in 1844: (WOAH presents
this information for educational purposes to show that birth control was
a knowledge that was acceptable and disseminated in popular literature.
Such knowledge (the right to chose when and if a woman wants to become
a mother) was taken away from women of the U.S. We do not recommend the
methods.)
ANNAY'S PREVENTIVE LOTION
Take pearlash, 1 part; water,
6 parts. Mix and filter. Keep it in close bottles, and use it, with or
without soap, immediately after connexion (sexual intercourse.)
PREVENTIVE LOTION
Take bichloride of mercury,
25 parts; milk of almonds, 400 parts; alcohol, 100 parts; rose-water, 1000
parts. Immerse the glands in a little of the mixture, as before, and be
particular to open the orifice of the urethra so as to admit the contact
of the fluid. This may be used as often as convenient, until the orifice
of the urethra feels tender on voiding the urine. Infallible is use in
proper time.
FOR THE DETECTION OF PREGNANCY
...Urine must be allowed
to stand for from 2 to 6 days, when minute opaque bodies are observed to
rise from the bottom to the surface of the fluid, where they gradually
agglomerate, and form a continuous layer over the surface. This layer is
so consistent that it may be almost lifted off by raising it by one of
its edges. This is the kisteine. It is whitish, opalescent, slightly granular,
and can be compared to nothing better than the fatty substance which floats
on the surface of soups, after they have been allowed to cool ...indicates
pregnancy.
-- excerpted
from Baxandall, Rosalyn; Gordon, Linda; and Reverby, Susan, editors, America's
Working Women, New York: Vintage Books, 1976.
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10-05 DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and EVENTS
B. 10-05-1641, Françoise-Athénaïs
de Roche-chouart, Marquise de Montespan. At 26 she became mistress
of Louis XIV of France. The affair lasted 13 years and she bore seven children
with him. Six survived childhood and were legitimated. She remained at
court even after the Louis transferred "his affections" to a
younger woman and even though she was accused of being the client of a
witch. Later in life she retired to a convent that she headed.
B.10-05-1658, Mary of Modena, second wife of
King James II of England. The couple's five sickly children
died early, blamed on her husband's sex diseases (syphilis among others).
One son prospered, however, and rumors started that
it was not James' son but one conceived with another man (some maintain
a high clerict was the father) to continue the Roman Catholic rule of England.
The situation set the stage for William of Orange's invasion of England.
Historians today consider the son to have been the true child of James.
B. 10-05-1717, Marie-Anne de Mailly-Nesle Chateauroux,
Duchess (duchesse) de, Mistress of Louis XV of France. Like so many
royal mistresses, she had greater influence over her lover than historians
like to admit. She used her influence with the king to promote French involvement
in the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-48)
Event 10-05-1853: Rebecca Mann Pennell becomes
first woman college professor, serving at Antioch College, Yellow Springs,
Ohio.
B.10-05-1898, Ruth Adams Knight - U.S. radio
writer and teacher. RAK instructed many (women as well) how to use
radio effectively. She wrote Women Must Weep. Her mother was a school teacher.
B. 10-05-1899, Elda Emma Anderson - U.S. physicist.
EEA gave her life to her country as surely as any soldier with a gun. After
having been part of the team that developed the atomic bomb in World War
II, EEA devoted the rest of her life to the study of radiation protection.
EEA had been an academic teaching in various mid-
western colleges until, while on a sabbatical, she joined what would become
the Manhattan project. She moved to to Los Alamos. She witnessed the explosion
of the first atomic bomb in the desert of New Mexico.
EEA in cooperation with several scientists pioneered
health physics and she headed the education and training for the Health
Physic Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratories in Tennessee.
After years of research and teaching about radiation
protection which brought her world-wide recognition, Anderson contracted
fatal leukemia and breast cancer - obviously from her exposure to radiation.
DIED 10-05-1909, Mary Gwendolin Caldwell -
U.S. philanthropist. MGC donated $300,000 as the founder of the Catholic
University of America in the District of Columbia that opened its doors
in 1889. She renounced the Catholic faith in 1905 just before leaving her
husband of less than ten years. MGC was the recipient of the Laetare Medal.
Event 10-05-1922: Lillian Gatlin, president
of the National Association of Gold Star Mothers, became the first
woman to cross the continent by air. She made the flight as a special delivery
package in a mail plane because there was no commercial passenger service.
She hoped that the flight would create interest in having the second Sunday
in March set aside as a Memorial Day to Fliers.
LG flew under the auspices of Paul Henderson. Assistant
Postmaster General, in a U.S. Post Office de Havilland mail plane, which
followed the regular airmail route. The plane left San Francisco on 5 October
1922, stopped at Reno, Salt Lake City, Rock Springs and Cheyenne, Wyoming,
North Platte and Omaha, Nebraska, Iowa City, Chicago, and Cleveland, and
ended the trip at Mineola, New York, on 8 October. Her total flying time
was 27 hours, 11 minutes, and covered an estimated 2680 miles.
She carried with her souvenirs of several dead aviators:
the baby shoes of one, Lincoln Beachey's cuff buttons, and Harold Coffey's
goggles.
At each stop she addressed the people who gathered,
telling them that she was making the flight because she wished to "preserve
the memory of these men and many like them who died as martyrs to aviation
whether in civil pursuits or in the cause of their country"
(author unknown, 1922:1).
When asked by reporters at Mineola to comment on her
feelings about her trip she replied (author unknown 1922:1);
"It was a good deal
of a rest. Flying is the ideal method of traveling, no invitations to buy
products advertised on sign boards extending from coast to coast, nothing
to disturb the easy sailing through the atmosphere."
-- Excerpted from
United States Women in Aviation 1919-1929: Chapter 1, "Women
Take a Place In Aviation."
B. 10-05-1923, Glynis John - South African
born British actor who starred in Hollywood and British films.
B.10-05-1932, Yvonne Brathwaite Burke,
U.S. Representative from California January
3, 1973 - January 3, 1979. She failed in her bid to become State Attorney
General of California in 1978.
Continuing her community activism, YBB was elected
to the Los Angeles Country Supervisors in 1992 and reelected 1996.
YBB was the first Black member of the California State
legislator.
"As a member of
(The U.S. House of Representatives') Appropriations (committee) she called
for additional federal funding of community nutrition programs. She also
sought funding for the resettlement of Vietnamese refugees and supported
the Humphrey-Hawkins bill for full employment. Burke was one of several
Members who in 1977 secured a human rights amendment to the foreign aid
bill, and she supported other such efforts to pressure foreign governments
guilty of human rights violations. She also worked to restore planning
grants from Housing and Urban Development. In 1977 she introduced the Displaced
Homemakers Act which authorized job training centers for women entering
the labor market. Burke was selected as the first woman to chair the Congressional
Black Caucus in 1976."
-- Excerpt
from her official U.S. House of Representatives' biography at http://bioguide.congress.gov/congresswomen/index.asp
B.10-05-1939, Marie-Claire Blais, French Canadian
novelist and poet. MCB left school at 15 and published her first acclaimed
novel at 20. She wrote of a world full of doubts and shadows, of madness
and shifting realities by using social outcasts to illustrate her themes.
Her Une Saison Dan LaVie d'Emmanuel (1965)
- translated as A Season in the Life of Emmanuel (1966) is considered her
most important work with honors also going to Vivre! Vivre! and
Les nuits de l'Underground. Her novels have been translated into
more than a dozen languages. MCB won innumerable awards and made a Member
of the Order of Canada (1980).
Event 10-05-1943: WASP pilots are landing a
shipment of new BT-15's from the U.S. factory to the Orange County
Airport, Ontario, where they were ferried on to England. One plane entering
its turn onto the final approach falters, goes into a diving steep turn
and crashes.
Virginia Moffatt, an able flier, is dead. Most WASPs
who witnessed the crash believe it is the "old" problem of carbon
monoxide leaking in the cockpit of the BT-15's, a known problem that caused
many of the women transporting the planes to fly the planes with their
canopies partially open regardless of the cold.
The exhaust systems were fixed before the planes were
passed on to the more important and valuable male military pilots.
B.10-05-1975, Kate Winslet, U.S. actor.
Event 10-05-1989: The Florida State Supreme
court cited the state constitution's privacy amendment in unanimously
striking down a state law that required parental consent for a minor woman's
abortion. The court ruled the privacy amendment guarantees the right of
privacy for "every natural person."
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QUOTES DU JOUR
WILLIAMSON, MARIANNE:
"The
world as it is has very little use for your womanhood. You are considered
a weaker sex and are treated as a sexual object. You are thoroughly dispensable
except for bearing children. Your youth is the measure of your worth, and
your age is the measure of your worthlessness. Do not look to the world
for your sustenance or for your identity as a woman because you will not
find them there. The world despises you."
-- Williamson, Marianne. A Woman's Worth. New York: Random House,
1993.
O'CONNOR, SANDRA DAY:
"[A
woman's] suffering is too intimate and personal for the state to insist
... upon its own vision of the woman's role, however dominant that vision
has been in the course of our history and our culture. The destiny of the
woman must be shaped to a large extent on her own conception of her spiritual
imperatives and her place in society."
-- The U.S. Supreme Court decision, 1992, that saved Roe v Wade.
The majority decision was written by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.
McINTYRE, LESLIE:
"Nobody
objects to a woman being a good writer or sculptor or geneticist if at
the same time she manages to be a good wife, good mother, good-looking,
good-tempered, well-groomed and unaggressive."
-- Leslie M. McIntyre.
LeGUIN, URSULA K.:
"Part
of my satisfaction and exultation at each eruption was unmistakably feminist
solidarity. You men think you're the only ones that can make a really nasty
mess? You think you got all the firepower and God's on you side? You think
you run things? Watch this, gents. Watch the Lady act like a woman."
--
Ursula K. Le Guin commenting on the eruptions of Mount St. Helens.
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