| 12-12 TABLE of CONTENTS:
Excerpt from Listening, by Sey Chessler
DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and
EVENTS
QUOTE by
May Daly.
Excerpt from Listening
by Sey Chessler
"One
morning about 20 years ago, my wife and I were arguing about whether or
not I ever listened to her. It was one of those arguments that grow into
passion and pain and, often, to me at least, into a kind of hysteria. This
one became one of those that do not go away with the years.
"Suddenly, she threw something at me, and said:
'From now on you do the shopping, plan the
meals, take care of the house, everything. I'm through!'
"I was standing in the kitchen looking at the
shelves of food, at the oven, at the sink, at the refrigerator, at the
cleaning utensils. At my wife. My reaction was orgasmic. Somewhere inside
of me there was screaming, hurting, a volcanic gush of tears flooded my
head and broke down over me. I shook and sobbed. I was terrified. No matter
what, I knew I could not handle the burden. I could not do my job and be
responsible for the entire household. How could I get through a day dealing
with personnel, budgets, manuscripts, art departments, circulation statistics,
phone calls, people agents, management, writers, and AT THE SAME TIME plan
dinner for tonight and tomorrow night and breakfast and a dinner party
Thursday night and shopping for it all and making sure the house is in
good shape and the woman who cleans for us is there and on time and the
laundry done and the children taken to the doctor, and the children taken
care of?
"How could ANY ONE person do all that and stay
sane: No one could do that properly. No one. Natalie simply watched me
for a while. Finally she said: 'Okay. Don't
worry. I'll keep on doing it.' She put on
her coat and went to her office.
"Despite her simple statement that she would
go on doing it, I stood awhile telling myself that NO ONE could do all
of that. No one. There was a CLICK in my head - and it dawned on me that
SHE was doing it.
"How invisible my wife's life was to me. How
invisible to men women are."
[Another excerpt from this essay can be found
in WOA 12-13.]
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12-12 DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and
EVENTS
B. 12-12-1747, Anna Seward, English poet and
author of Louisa (1784).
B. 12-12-1779, Saint Madeleine-Sophie Barat,
founder of the Society of the Sacred Heart.
B. 12-12-1928, Helen Frankenthaler, American
painter and one of the inventors of color field technique. Her Mountains
and Seas, 1952 was highly influential.
B. 12-12-1835, Sarah Brown Ingersoll Cooper,
director and superintendent of the Gold
Gate Kindergarten Association, which incorporated nearly 4,000 pupils in
the pioneer learning experience.
B. 12-12-1857, Lillian Nordica, great lyric
soprano with the Metropolitan Opera, who
oddly was best known for her Wagnerian opera roles.
B. 12-12-1869, Clara Damrosch Mannes, musical
educator and pianist. Daughter of musician
Leopold Damrosch and brother of conductor Walter, she was an accomplished
pianist and was already a teacher when she married. She and her husband
founded the David Mannes Music School (later Mannes College of Music) and
were world-acclaimed duet concert pianists.
B. 12-12-1870, Rachel Crothers, playwright,
started writing plays at 13. Many of her more than 38 plays have the theme
of strong women wanting to live a life of freedom. In addition to writing
them, RC also directed and produced some 34 on Broadway. She helped form
the American Theatre Wing, which operated such things as the Stage Door
Canteen during WWII. Her mother at age 40 went to medical school.
B. 12-12-1900, Maria Telkes, Hungarian-born
American physical chemist and biophysicist
who developed a distillation system converting sea water to fresh water
using solar energy. MT planned the solar energy home designed by Amelia
Peabody, designed by Eleanor Raymond, using sodium sulphate decahydrate
to store solar heat (and dissipate summer heat). It worked fine.
B. 12-12-1962, Tracey Ann Austin, tennis player,
at 16 became the youngest person to win the U.S. Open. Won her second open
in 1981 just before an injury cut short her career.
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QUOTES DU JOUR
DALY, MAY:
"If God is male, then male is God. The divine patriarchy castrates
women as long as he is allowed to live on in the human imagination."
-- May Daly, Beyond God the Father
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