It is utterly classic for me to get extraordinarily enthusiastic about a project and then, slowly and inevitably, get dragged down in to the muck and the mire of the details of getting it going. For instance: as a child, I spent hours sculpting the characters for the stories I was of course going to […]
This week’s Kickstartable feature is one that has fascinated me. 50 Years of Broad Ambition: Ladies of the Barbizon features the history of this glamorous women’s hotel and the career girls who lived there.
Happy birthday, Girl Scouts!!! This year marks the 100th anniversary of the foundation of Girl Scouts and today is the big day that Juliette Gordon Low first gathered 18 girls to form the first troop. This, of course, means celebration via Girl Scout cookie eating and a stroll through the history of Girl Scouts. Grab […]
Another year, another March, another Women’s History Month. Like many a feminist, I’ve participated in yearly celebrations and presentations celebrating the contribution of women to our society, but it’s only been recently that I realized I had no knowledge whatsoever of WHM’s history. If there’s one thing I do know, celebrations of marginalized members of […]
I never took much mind to “women’s firsts” (first U.S. female astronaut, first female-owned Indy 500 team, those sorts of things), even though they all happened in my lifetime. I never took much mind, that is, until I became the parent of a girl. Then, as newscasters announced, “Katie Couric is the first woman to […]
On August 3, 1952, Ruby McCollum walked into the colored waiting room of Dr. C. Leroy Adams”™ office in Live Oak, [RubyMcCollum Headline] Florida. By the time she walked out and returned home, Dr. Adams had been shot three times in the back and once in the arm. A case that officials wanted to chalk up to a bill dispute quickly became a matter of something else, crossing into civil rights issues, “paramour”™s rights,” and mistreatment of the mentally ill.
So let it be known that Wallis is not a Badass Lady in the same vein as Amelia Earhart or Eleanor Roosevelt or Josephine Baker (though she may have known Jo! They both hung out in Paris during the 30s so it’s highly likely they crossed paths) or other women who actively campaigned for equality […]