Joanna Johnson

The Awesome Woman of the Day for Wednesday, May 16, 2012 is Joanna Johnson (US actress, writer, and producer) born December 31, 1961. She is best known for her work on the Bold and the Beautiful, a television soap opera in the United States, but she just did something very very brave: she came out as gay and married in an industry - and a particular subset of that industry - in which conventional wisdom counsels performers to stay closeted.

Soap operas, in particular, are an intergenerational media outlet, and, by coming out, Ms. Johnson is reaching people of all ages who have been having her into their homes every day for years. And she does it at no small risk to her. This is a brave and helpful thing she has done. Awesome.

http://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/soap-opera-star-joanna-johnson-im-gay-2012155

See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joanna_Johnson

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0425394/

Soap Opera Star Joanna Johnson: Iâ m Gaywww.usmagazine.comThe Bold and the Beautiful star worried she wouldn't "be employable as an actress" if people knew she was a lesbian

Joanna Johnson

The Awesome Woman of the Day for Wednesday, May 16, 2012 is Joanna Johnson (US actress, writer, and producer) born December 31, 1961. She is best known for her work on the Bold and the Beautiful, a television soap opera in the United States, but she just did something very very brave: she came out as gay and married in an industry - and a particular subset of that industry - in which conventional wisdom counsels performers to stay closeted.

Soap operas, in particular, are an intergenerational media outlet, and, by coming out, Ms. Johnson is reaching people of all ages who have been having her into their homes every day for years. And she does it at no small risk to her. This is a brave and helpful thing she has done. Awesome.

See:

Soap Opera Star Joanna Johnson: I'm Gay 
www.usmagazine.com 
The Bold and the Beautiful star worried she wouldn't "be employable as an actress" if people knew she was a lesbian...


See also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joanna_Johnson 
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0425394/

Margaret Ogg

♥ ♥ ♥ Today's Awesome Woman is Margaret Ogg (1863-1953) Margaret Ogg is best known for her extensive political, social and feminist activities. She was one of ten children born to a Presbyterian minister. She was a poet, writer and an accomplished musician, playing viola in the family quartet, as well as holding membership with the Musical Association.

She wrote under the pseudonym "Ann Dante" (Andante). Ogg loved wildflowers and as a result of outings to the Daffodil Farm at Sunnybank and many picnics to Mt Gravatt, St. John's Wood and Petrie, she wrote the poem titled "Out in the Bush". She was active in Brisbane literary circles and also sub-edited the Presbyterian Austral Star.

A staunch monarchist and anti-socialist, Ogg actively toured outback townships in Queensland promoting women's suffrage, and encouraging pioneer women to become involved in state and national affairs. As founder, co-founder and member of many Queensland women's organisations, she was consistently at the forefront of political and social campaigns to secure reforms for Queensland's women and children.

At various stages of her life she was the only woman executive-member of the National Political Council, organising secretary of the women's central committee of the Queensland Deaf and Dumb Mission, and co-founder of the Queensland Bush Club. Through persistently lobbying the State government, Ogg was instrumental in having the Criminal Code Amendment Act 1913 passed, as well as the Testators' Family Maintenance Act 1914 through which widows were entitled to a
proportion of the husband's estate.

Margaret Ogg was multitalented, intellectual, community minded and quick witted. Shortly before her death, in a letter dated 28 October 1946, Miss Ogg wrote:
"No woman can do more than her little bit - often falling far short of intention, but it has been my privilege to have as co-workers some of the finest women in Queensland, and the success and development which attended our efforts was, and is due to their loyalty and self-sacrifice, without which no sure foundation can be laid".

http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/ogg-margaret-ann-7887

Tillie Olsen

Today's Awesome Woman of the Day is Tillie Olsen. She was a writer, worker and union organizer who talked about the difficulties the working class, and working class women in particular, had finding time to write. I have her books Silences, and Yonnondio, which is another good reason to clear out the boxes in my basement. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tillie_Olsen

Tillie Olsen - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia en.wikipedia.org
Tillie Lerner Olsen (January 14, 1912 – January 1, 2007)[1] was an American writer associated with the political turmoil of the 1930s and the first generation of American feminists.

Cynthia Heimel

I was googling Cynthia Heimel for Awesome Woman of the Day and was shocked to see her pitiful Wikipedia entry and it’s three meager paragraphs.

To me, Heimel is HUGE, a groundbreaking, sexy, funny, feminist, smart writer. While women’s magazines were giving me advice in 1986 like, “Wear red shoes because men like them,” Heimel came out with the satirical--but kind of not--book Sex Tips For Girls. In it, she recommended I FIRST figure out what the hell I actually liked, then proceed from there. For my 1986 self (embarrassingly enough) this was big news.

I like what Amanda Krauss’ wrote in her blog, Worst Professor Ever about Heimel:

...I write because of Cynthia Heimel. In addition to writing several books, Cynthia Heimel was a columnist for The Village Voice, then Playboy. Why Playboy? Because they let her say what she wanted, which isn’t as easy as it sounds. She was too sexy for Ms., too funny to be a “serious” intellectual, and too angry to appear in “women’s” magazines. I’ve always thought she would have been even more successful had she written in the internet age. (She’s not dead or anything, she’s just not writing regularly as far as I can tell.)

Cynthia Heimel thought that women could read Proust and discuss fashion, that they could like men and still be feminists, and that, while they were laughing, they still had a right to get angry about inequality. Also, men like her writing. I can’t tell you the number of times a guy’s been helping me move and I’ve found him reading my copy of Sex Tips for Girls. Cynthia Heimel is funny and angry and fashionable and sexy and smart, and I still don’t see “women’s” magazines (or blogs) doing what she did.

Cynthia Heimel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

en.wikipedia.org

Cynthia Heimel is a playwright, television writer, and the author of several satirical books which are aimed primarily at a female readership. To those who have heard of her but have not read her books, her works are probably best known for their unusual titles.

Molly Ivins

The Awesome Woman of the Day is Molly Ivins. She died in 2007 and the world of political snark hasn't been the same. She took on the powerful and the elite on behalf of the powerless and down trodden. She named her dog 'Shit'. She got fired for referring to a chicken processing plant as a "gang-pluck". She was a liberal in Texas, y'all. If that doesn't say something about her spine I don't know what will. I loved Molly Ivins, and I recommend her books to anyone who 1) wants to laugh til they cry or 2) read about political shenanigans til they cry or 3) both.

Molly Ivins, Columnist, Dies at 62 - New York Times

www.nytimes.com

The liberal writer derided those who she thought acted too big for their britches.

Betty Friedan

Today's awesome woman is Betty Friedan. She was many, many things (including Aquarius) but none of those things was "dull". Changing the world didn't look like it was easy or fun, but she did it anyway. As a stay-at-home-mom, I owe her a great debt. Without her, I might have been afraid to ask for "my time" and "my stuff" because housewives weren't supposed to need or want anything for themselves. Thank you, Betty Friedan, for saving women from drowning in their own mystique.

Betty Friedan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

en.wikipedia.org

A leading figure in the Women's Movement in the United States, her 1963 book The Feminine Mystique is often credited with sparking the "second wave" of American feminism in the twentieth century.

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Begum Roquia Sakhawat Hussain

Begum Roquia Sakhawat Hussain (1880 – December 9, 1932) was a Bengali social worker, writer, and Muslim feminist activist, who was best known for advocating for reform of Muslim laws that limited women’s rights. Founder of the first Muslim girls’ school, Sakhawat Hussain also founded the Anjuman e Khawateen e Islam (Islamic Women’s Association), which held debates and conferences on the status of women and education. She used irony, satire, and humor in her writing, in order to highlight and expose injustices experienced by Bengali-speaking Muslim women.

Begum Roquia was an inspiring figure who contributed much to the struggle to liberate women from the bondage of social malaises. To raise popular consciousness, especially among women, she wrote a number of articles, stories and novels, mostly in Bengali.

She criticized oppressive social customs forced upon women that were based upon the corrupted version of Islam, asserting that women fulfilling their potential as human beings could best display the glory of Allah.

Begum Roquia wrote courageously against restrictions on women in order to promote their emancipation. She believed it would come by breaking the gender division of labor. She rejected discrimination for women in the public arena. She also believed that discrimination would cease only when women were able to undertake whatever profession they chose.

Works

• Sultana's Dream, a notable early work of feminist science fiction, involving a utopian male/female role-reversal.
• Oborodhbashini (The woman in captivity)
• Motichur
• Paddorag (Essence of the lotus)
• (unfinished) Narir Adhikar (The Rights of Women), an essay for the Islamic Women's Association

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Florence Nightingale

In light of my current situation, I thought it appropriate to make Today’s AWU WOD Florence Nightingale (May 2, 1820 – August 13,1910). She was a celebrated English nurse, writer and statistician. An Anglican, Nightingale believed that God had called her to be a nurse. She came to prominence for her pioneering work in nursing during the Crimean War, where she tended to wounded soldiers. She was dubbed "The Lady with the Lamp" after her habit of making rounds at night.
Florence refused to marry several suitors, and at the age of twenty-five told her parents she wanted to become a nurse. Her parents were totally opposed to the idea as nursing was associated with working class women.

Florence's desire to have a career in medicine was reinforced when she met Elizabeth Blackwell at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London. Blackwell was the first woman to qualify as a doctor in the United States. Blackwell, who had to overcome considerable prejudice to achieve her ambition, encouraged her to keep trying and in 1851 Florence's father gave her permission to train as a nurse.
Nightingale laid the foundation of professional nursing with the establishment, in 1860, of her nursing school at St Thomas' Hospital in London, the first secular nursing school in the world, now part of King's College London. The Nightingale Pledge taken by new nurses was named in her honour, and the annual International Nurses Day is celebrated around the world on her birthday.

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Alice Walker

Today’s AWU WOD is Alice Walker, born February 9, 1944 in Eaton Georgia. She wrote The Color Purple, the 1982 novel that won the Pulitzer Prize and Walker was a civil rights activist as a young woman in the American south, and an editor at Ms. magazine in the 1970s. She expresses the struggles of blacks, particularly women, and their lives in a racist, sexist, and violent society. Her writings also focus on the role of women of color in culture and history. Walker is a respected figure in the liberal political community for her support of unconventional and unpopular views as a matter of principle.

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Hildegard of Bingen

The Awesome Woman of the Day is Hildegard of Bingen (1098 – 17 September 1179) A writer, composer, philosopher, Christian mystic, German Benedictine abbess, visionary, and polymath. She founded the monasteries of Rupertsberg in 1150 and Eibingen in 1165. One of her works as a composer, the Ordo Virtutum, is an early example of liturgical drama.

Encyclopædia Britannica's Guide to Women's History

search.eb.com

Hildegard was born of noble parents and was educated at the Benedictine cloister of Disibodenberg by Jutta, an anchorite and sister of the count of Spanheim. Hildegard was 15 years old when she began wearing the Benedictine habit and pursuing a religious life. She succeeded Jutta as prioress in 1136

Hildegard was born a "10"th child (a tithe) to a noble family. As was customary with the tenth child, which the family could not count on feeding, she was dedicated at birth to the church. The girl started to have visions of luminous objects at the age of tree, but soon realized she was unique in this ability and hid this gift for many years.

At a time when few women wrote, she wrote theological, botanical and medicinal texts, as well as letters, liturgical songs, poems, and arguably the oldest surviving morality play, while supervising brilliant miniature Illuminations.

When few women were accorded respect, she was consulted by and advised bishops, popes, and kings.

At age 8, the family sent this strange girl to an anchoress named Jutta to receive a religious education. Jutta was born into a wealthy and prominent family, and by all accounts was a young woman of great beauty. She spurned all worldly temptations and decided to dedicate her life to god. Instead of entering a convent, Jutta followed a harsher route and became an anchoress. Anchors of both sexes, though from most accounts they seem to be largely women, led an ascetic life, shut off from the world inside a small room, usually built adjacent to a church so that they could follow the services, with only a small window acting as their link to the rest of humanity. Food would be passed through this window and refuse taken out. Most of the time would be spent in prayer, contemplation, or solitary handworking activities, like stitching and embroidering. Because they would become essentially dead to the world, anchors would receive their last rights from the bishop before their confinement in the anchorage. This macabre ceremony was a complete burial ceremony with the anchor laid out on a bier.

Hildegard's writings are also unique for their generally positive view of sexual relations and her description of pleasure from the point of view of a woman. They might also contain the first description of the female orgasm.

'When a woman is making love with a man, a sense of heat in her brain, which brings with it sensual delight, communicates the taste of that delight during the act and summons forth the emission of the man's seed. And when the seed has fallen into its place, that vehement heat descending from her brain draws the seed to itself and holds it, and soon the woman's sexual organs contract, and all the parts that are ready to open up during the time of menstruation now close, in the same way as a strong man can old something enclosed in his fist. '

‎"The soul is a breath of living spirit, that with excellent sensitivity, permeates the entire body to give it life. Just so, the breath of the air makes the earth fruitful. Thus the air is the soul of the earth, moistening it, greening it." 

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Isabel Allende

It's the birthday of the novelist Isabel Allende, (books by this author) born in Lima, Peru (1942), the author of many books, including Eva Luna (1987) and Portrait in Sepia (2000).

 Her father's cousin, Salvador Allende, became Chile's first elected socialist president. But on September 11, 1973, a military coup led by General Pinochet overthrew the government and assassinated Salvador Allende. Isabel and all her family were put on a wanted list and received death threats, so they fled to Venezuela.

 While she was in Venezuela, Isabel Allende found out that her beloved grandfather was dying in Chile, and she couldn't go back to see him. So she started to write him a letter, to reassure him that she wouldn't forget all his stories and memories.

 It became her first novel, The House of the Spirits (1985), a novel of magical realism that tells the story of four generations of the Trueba family and their lives in Chile from the turn of the century through the coup.

 -The Writer's Almanac