Belva Lockwood

The awesome woman for Wednesday, October 24, 2012 is Belva Lockwood, USA, attorney, author, world peace and women’s rights activist, and politician. She was either the first or second woman to run for President of the United States, and she was one of the first female civil rights attorneys in the US.

Lockwood was born on October 24, 1830 in Royalton, NY, USA. She started teaching elementary school at age 14. By age 18, she was married. By 20, she had a baby. When her husband died three years later, she decided to go to college so that she could support herself and her daughter. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belva_Ann_Lockwood

There wasn’t a lot of community support available for widowed mothers seeking higher education, but Belva did it anyway, and, while she was at it, she became interested in the law. After graduating, she taught at, and later ran, local schools for young women. During that time, she met Susan B. Anthony, who advocated for broadening the subjects being taught to young women. Belva agreed and began offering such subjects as public speaking and gymnastics. Id.

However, Belva continued to be interested in practicing law, and there was no law school near her, so she and her daughter moved to Washington DC, where she opened a coeducational school and began to study law herself. She completed her coursework, but the school refused to give her a diploma, because she was a woman. 

 Without a diploma, Lockwood could not gain admittance to the District of Columbia Bar. After a year she wrote a letter to the President of the United States, Ulysses S. Grant, appealing to him as president ex officio of the National University Law School. She asked him for justice, stating she had passed all her courses and deserved to be awarded a diploma. In September 1873, within a week of having sent the letter, Lockwood received her diploma. She was 43 years old.
Lockwood was admitted to the District of Columbia Bar, although several judges told her they had no confidence in her. This was a reaction she repeatedly had to overcome. When she tried to gain admission to the Maryland Bar Association, a judge lectured her and told her that God Himself had determined that women were not equal to men and never could be. When she tried to respond on her own behalf, he said she had no right to speak and had her removed from the courtroom”  Id.

In spite of all that, she managed to build a large and influential civil rights law practice, to mount a credible third party candidacy for President of the United States, and to become an important and well-known advocate for world peace. Id.

For more information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belva_Ann_Lockwood

Sharmeka Moffitt

Today Tuesday October 23, 2012 the woman of the Day is Sharmeka Moffitt. This woman deserves our attention. I am sickened by the lack of humanity.

Louisiana Woman Set On Fire, Has Car Defiled With 'KKK' Slur

www.huffingtonpost.com

A Louisiana woman was the victim of a horrific attack during which she was reportedly set on fire and had her car defiled with the letters "KKK," police reported Monday. 

Elizabeth George Speare

The Awesome Woman of the Day for Wednesday, October 17, 2012, is Elizabeth George Speare (November 21, 1908 – November 15, 1994), U.S.A., award-winning author of children’s historical fiction.

I can still remember the first time I read The Witch of Blackbird Pond, probably Speare’s best-known work. Kit Tyler was perhaps the most dynamic female character I had ever encountered at the ripe old age of 9, unless you count the capitulation of Jo March from single career woman to wife and mother (but that’s a different awesome woman for a different day). Kit, to me, was unique in what I saw as a mix of good and bad traits and bents and how her journey reflected on the good and bad elements of her origins in Barbados and her home in puritanical Connecticut. She was privileged beyond belief (and don’t even get me started on the unwritten-about costs of that privilege), but her privilege came with a freedom of thought and movement that was completely incomprehensible to her pilgrim cousins.

As she accustoms herself to her new surroundings, she learns life skills – ninja skills, really, both in terms of functioning authentically within a restrictive environment and in finding inner peace even when the people around you are completely insane. And she becomes an authentic heroine. The book has its own ninja skills at work exploring both the benefits of cooperative society and the risks and burdens of religious oppression (especially sexism) without rocking the patriarchal boat so hard that fifth grade teachers couldn’t assign the book in class. Virtually all of the important characters are female, and all of the book’s important themes are viewed from female perspectives. And my 11 year old son, whose class has been assigned the book, hasn’t complained even once.

The book was written in 1958, so, of course, it ends with Kit finding her happily ever after with the right man. But he at least seems to appreciate her for who she is and to be okay with the concept of being her equal.

So, for that, I thank Ms. Speare.

For more information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_George_Speare

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Witch_of_Blackbird_Pond

Malala Yousafzai

Today Tuesday October 16, 2012 the Awesome Woman of the day is Malala Yousafzai (born July 12, 1997) from the town of Mingora in Swat District, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, Pakistan. She is the incredibly brave 15yr old who defied the Taliban and spoke out about the importance of an education for young women. The Taliban banned her (and all girls) from going to school where she lives in Swat Valley.
Swat, was occupied by the Taliban from March 2009 until May 2009, when the Pakistani Army regained control of the area. During the conflict, when she was 12 years old, she championed the cause of the people of Swat by blogging a diary for the BBC under a pseudonym “Gul Makai” about the atrocities of the Tehrik-i-Taliban regime. She volunteered to contribute to the blog when a journalist friend of her fathers could not find any other young girl to speak out.
In her blogging, she was very confident. In the tribal area where she grew up, it is difficult for a child to talk to their elders, they are often shy, but she is not. She also has a very good political understanding of her area. Her father is a big influence on her, because he was a political activist and he talks to her to explain to her about the environment. Therefore, she has good knowledge of the area and she was trained by her father how to talk to the media. She is also a very keen observer. When she was writing her diary, it was like the voice of Swat Valley. Malala's diary, had a journalistic appeal for the local and international Media. Pakistani media was not highlighting the humanitarian issues but trying to show the world that it was only a security problem. However, this diary gave a humanitarian face to the tragedy, which attracted the International Media.

For her courageous and outstanding services for the promotion of peace under extremely hostile conditions, she was awarded the first National Peace Award by the Pakistani government on 19 December 2011. Speaking to the media afterwards, she expressed her intent to form a political party focused on education.
The Government Girls Secondary School, Mission Road, was immediately renamed Malala Yousufzai Government Girls Secondary School in her honour.She was named after Malalai of Maiwand, a Pashtun poet and warrior woman.

The international children’s advocacy group KidsRights Foundation included Yousafzai among the nominees for the International Children’s Peace Prize, making her the first Pakistani girl nominated for the award. South African Nobel laureate Desmund Tutu announced the nominations during a 2011 ceremony in Amsterdam, Holland, but Yousafzai did not win the prize.
On 9 October 2012, Yousafzai was shot in the head and neck in an assassination attempt by Taliban gunmen while returning home on a school bus. Ihsanullah Ihsan, the chief spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, officially claimed responsibility for the attack, saying that she is symbolic of obscenity and has spread negative propaganda.
A group of 50 Islamic clerics in Pakistan have issued a fatwā against those who tried to kill her. The Taliban has reiterated its intent to kill Yousafzai and her father, Ziauddin.
She is currently fighting for her life after being transported to a Hospital in the UK.

Genevieve Hughes

Awesome Woman of the Day for Wednesday, October 10, 2012. Rest in Peace, Ms. Hughes, and thank you.

Timeline Photos

...

By: Help Me Register to Vote - 50 States

Edna Adan

Today Tuesday October 9 2012 the WOD is Edna Adan, an inspiring advocate for women and girls. Her maternity hospital in Somaliland is an oasis of healing and care for the country's women.

Adan was raised in Somaliland in an educated and wealthy family, when the country was a protectorate of the British Empire. When she was 15, a girls' school opened in Somaliland. Adan went to work there as a student teacher and also received private lessons. She was permitted to sit for exams, in a room separate from the boys, and was the first Somali girl awarded one of a few coveted scholarships to study in Britain. She spent seven years there, studying nursing, midwifery and hospital management.

When she returned home to Somaliland, Adan became the first qualified nurse-midwife in the country and the first Somali woman to drive a car. She later became the first lady when she married Somaliland's prime minister, Ibrahim Egal. After they divorced, Adan was recruited to join the World Health Organization (WHO), where she held various key positions advocating for the abolition of harmful traditional practices, such as female genital cutting.

But Adan never let go of a life-long dream to build a hospital, so upon retiring from the WHO she sold all of her possessions, including her beloved Mercedes, and returned to Somaliland to make her dream a reality. There was only one available plot of land within the capital of Hargeisa, land which since the civil war had been used as a trash dump. But it was in the poor area of town, near those who needed the hospital the most. So she negotiated with the president, her ex-husband, and obtained the land for her hospital.

When the structure was completed but the roof not yet installed, the project ran out of money. But with assistance from the Friends of Edna's Hospital and in-kind donations from local merchants, Adan finished construction and the hospitalopened in 2002. Since then, Adan has focused her efforts on a new goal: training and dispatching 1,000 qualified midwives throughout Somaliland. Adan continues to work as the hospital's director and strives to improve the lives and health of women throughout her country.

Fannie Lou Hamer

Fannie Lou Hamer - Awesome Woman - Voting Rights Advocate

History in Pictures - October

...

History in Pictures features just a few of the many stories that are often left out of the textbooks. The sources for these stories include: This Week in History from Peace Buttons (http://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/thisweek.htm), Planning to Change the World: A Social Justice Plan Book for Teachers (http://www.justi...See More

By: Zinn Education Project

Rebecca Lolosoli

The Awesome Woman of the Day for Wednesday, October 3, 2012 is Rebecca Lolosoli, women's rights activist specializing in helping women who are victims of (nearly always male-perpetrated) violence. http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/half-the-sky/rebecca-lolosoli/

There's really no way for me to do her justice, so I give you her own words:
http://www.satyamag.com/jun07/lolosoli.html

DEFINITELY watch the PBS documentary Half the Sky.

For more information: http://www.umojawomen.net/

http://www.vitalvoices.org/node/542

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/03/06/women-in-the-world-rebecca-lolosoli-kenya.html

Rebecca Lolosoli | Half the Sky | Independent Lens | PBS

www.pbs.org

Rebecca Lolosoli is the matriarch of the Umoja Women's Village and an advocate for women's rights. 

Dr. Marie Valdés-Dapena

Today Tuesday October 2, 2012 the WOD is Dr. Marie Valdés-Dapena (1921- Oct 1, 2012) Pathologist, pioneering researcher on SIDS, and mother of 11 children. She lived an extraordinary life as a pioneer in the study of sudden infant death syndrome; a leading pediatric pathologist who was among the first to recognize what is now known as child abuse; and a working mother of 11 children in an era when few women worked and far fewer were doctors. In fact, she was performing an autopsy at nine months pregnant. She was watching a clock - timing her contractions, determined to complete the job before delivering her own baby.

The grandmother of sudden infant death research, Dapena, whom everyone refers to as "Molly," developed her expertise in pediatric pathology as a consultant to the Philadelphia medical examiner before relocating to Florida. Dr. Valdés-Dapena was best known to the public as a pathologist in the biggest maternal infanticide case in recorded history - Marie Noe's murder of eight babies in the Kensington section of Philadelphia. In the 1960s, a local couple became the most famous bereaved parents in America, as their infants died one after another. One of the first child autopsies Molly Dapena ever did for the city was that of Constance Noe, baby number five, in 1958. She went on to assist or observe on all the others through number ten -- which she believes is the most babies ever lost by one mother.

A Philadelphia Magazine investigation revealed the deaths were indeed tragic, but perhaps not unexplainable.

Dr.Dapena moved back to the Philadelphia area to be closer to her children when she was 77. She died Sunday at the Rose Tree Place retirement community near Media. She had struggled with advanced dementia for many years.

Emily Warren Roebling

The Awesome Woman of the Day for Wednesday, September 26, 2012 is Emily Warren Roebling, U.S. civil engineer (September 23, 1843 – February 28, 1903).

Emily’s father-in-law was John Roebling, the guy who came up with the idea for the Brooklyn Bridge. He died of tetanus before construction began, and his son, Emily’s husband, Washington Roebling became bedridden from decompression sickness (caisson disease) from working deep under water in the bridge caissons.

Rather than abandon the project, Emily learned civil engineering so that she could work with her husband to finish the bridge. Her participation was, to put it mildly, controversial, and she and Washington had to fight to remain on the project (a fight they won). From The ACSE website: “At the opening ceremony, a Roebling competitor, Abram Hewitt, said of her: "The name of Emily Warren Roebling will...be inseparably associated with all that is admirable in human nature and all that is wonderful in the constructive world of art." He called the bridge "an everlasting monument to the self-sacrificing devotion of a woman and of her capacity for that higher education from which she has been too long disbarred." http://www.asce.org/PPLContent.aspx?id=2147487328

For more information:

http://www.engineergirl.org/?id=11849

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Warren_Roebling

http://articles.nydailynews.com/2012-05-24/news/31842384_1_john-roebling-washington-roebling-brooklyn-bridge

Reba McEntire

Today Tuesday September 25, 2012 the WOD is Reba McEntire in honor of her celebrating 20yrs of Reba's Ranch House. 

Reba Nell McEntire (Born March 28, 1955, in McAlester, Oklahoma) is an American chart-topping, award-winning country music singer. She has also acted in films, starred in her own sitcom and owns several businesses with her husband and manager. Reba McEntire got her break singing the national anthem at the 1974 rodeo finals. She recorded with Mercury and MCA records, topped the country charts numerous times, and was crowned the CMA's best female vocalist for four consecutive years. 

I must admit I love Reba, her fiery red hair, her spirit, her humor and her enthusiasm for life even after the horrible tragedy of a charter plane carrying eight members of her band crashed. There were no survivors, and the accident left the singer stunned and reeling. She turned back to her music and out of her grief came a bleak but immensely popular album, For My Broken Heart, which she dedicated to her deceased bandmates. I confess however, I was never a country fan growing up so I never heard much of her music. Now, that has changed as of late, and I have grown to appreciate the Country genre and I do enjoy Reba’s music.

The reason I chose her for the WOD is that she has taken her celebrity and given back to those in need, specifically to families of those seeking life saving medical treatment. Reba's Ranch House, a service of the Texoma Health Foundation is a home-away-from-home for families traveling from out of town to be near loved ones who are hospitalized at Texoma Medical Center. Families of all patients, including but not limited to those hospitalized in the ICU, are welcome at the Ranch House. More than 24,000 guests representing over 8,800 families have found the comforts of home at the Ranch House during their time of need. In lieu of a nightly fee, donations are accepted to help ensure that Reba's Ranch House continues to offer families a place of comfort and support, near loved ones in the hospital.

Sister Simone Campbell

The Awesome Woman of the Day for Wednesday, September 19, 2012 is Sister Simone Campbell, catholic nun, one of the Nuns on the Bus.

http://youtu.be/K1Y34KOADxc

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/sister-simone-campbell-nun-from-the-bus-calls-gop-budget-immoral/2012/09/06/d815e19c-f867-11e1-a93b-7185e3f88849_story.html

A brief biography of her can be found here http://data.rac.org/bt/?page_id=247 - begin quoted matter:
Sister Simone Campbell: Biography


Sister Simone Campbell, Executive Director of NETWORK since 2004, is a religious leader, attorney and poet with extensive experience in public policy and advocacy for systemic change. In Washington, she lobbies on issues of peace building, health care, comprehensive immigration reform and economic justice. Around the country, she is a noted speaker and educator on these public policy issues.

Prior to coming to NETWORK, Simone served as the Executive Director of JERICHO, the California interfaith public policy organization that works like NETWORK to protect the interests of people who are poor. Simone also participated in a delegation of religious leaders to Iraq in December 2002, just prior to the invasion and on a delegation to Syria and Lebanon in January 2008 to experience the Iraqi refugee crisis. Since returning, she has spoken and written extensively on her experiences.

Before JERICHO, Simone served as the general director of her religious community, the Sisters of Social Service. She was the leader of her Sisters in the United States, Mexico, Taiwan and the Philippines. In this capacity, she negotiated with government and religious leaders in each of these countries.

In 1978, Simone founded and served for 18 years as the lead attorney for the Community Law Center in Oakland, California. She served the family law and probate needs of the working poor of her county.

Simone has her J.D. from the University of California at Davis where she was an editor of the law review. Her B.A. is from Mount St. Mary’s College in Los Angeles, CA, where she graduated with honors. (end quoted matter).

I apologize if she has been profiled before; I know we’ve posted articles about the Nuns on the Bus and their opposition to Paul Ryan’s budget.

Jacqueline Cochran

Today Tuesday September 18, 2012 the WOD is Jacqueline Cochran, a pioneer American aviator. (born approximately May, 1906 – August 9, 1980) She is considered to be one of the most gifted racing pilots of her generation. She was an important contributor to the formation of the wartime Women's Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC) and Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP).

Her most distinguished aviation career began in 1932 when she obtained her pilot's license with only three weeks of instruction. From this time onward, her life was one of total dedication to aviation. After her first air race in 1934, she was respected by all for her competitive spirit and high skill. Her performance in the aviation events of the 1930's is legendary. Among her last flight activities was the establishment in 1964 of a record of 1,429 MPH in the F-104 Starfighter.

At the beginning of World War II, she became a Wing Commander in the British Auxiliary Transport Service ferrying U.S. built Hudson bombers to England. With the U.S. entry into the War, she offered her services to the Army Air Corps and formed the famed Women's Air Force Service Pilots. This group, more than 1000 strong played a major role in the delivery of aircraft to the combat areas throughout the world. For this service, she was awarded the U.S. Distinguished Service Medal.

Interestingly, Cochran also excelled in the cosmetics business, which she had continued to run. During the 1950s, the Associated Press voted her "Woman of the Year in Business" two years in a row. She also served as a board member for museums and nonprofit organizations. In the end, Jackie Cochran, one of the world's best pilots, influenced the world well beyond aviation. From the 1930s onward, she left an indelible mark on aviation history.

Dr. Mamphela Ramphele

The Awesome Woman of the day for Wednesday, September 12, 2012, is Dr. Mamphela Ramphele, South African Human Rights Activist, anthropologist, medical doctor, author, and the lover of Steven Biko, who died 35 years ago today, after being tortured and interrogated by police. http://youtu.be/2mNPhPPn_xU

http://youtu.be/qBRGLdWMgoM

An excellent biography of Dr. Ramphele can be found here http://www.africansuccess.org/visuFiche.php?id=406&lang=en

I struggle a bit with her belief in empowerment through capitalism and especially with her activities with the World Bank. It rings all kinds of victim-blaming and Stockholm Syndrome bells for me. On the other hand, I think she is unquestionably a person of good faith and good intention who has accomplished a staggering amount. She is extraordinary. And awesome.

For more information:

http://www.womeninworldhistory.com/imow-Ramphele.pdf

http://www.whoswho.co.za/mamphela-ramphele-4739

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2005/mar/02/guardiansocietysupplement.southafrica

TEDxCapeTownED - Dr Mamphela Ramphele - Rising to our Citizens' Responsibility

www.youtube.com

Dr Ramphele is a South African academic, 

Clara Lemlich

In honor of Lily Ledbetter’s speech last night, and Labor Day the day before that, the Awesome Woman for Wednesday, September 5, 2012, is Clara Lemlich (March 28, 1886 – July 12, 1982), U.S. advocate for working women’s rights.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/biography/triangle-lemlich/

From the Jewish Women’s Archive (quote): Clara Lemlich was born in 1886 in Gorodok, Ukraine, to deeply religious parents. Like most girls, she was taught Yiddish but was offered no further Jewish schooling. Her parents were willing to send her to public school, but found that Gorodok’s only school excluded Jews. Angered by the Russian government’s antisemitism, her parents forbade her to speak Russian or to bring Russian books into their home. The headstrong child continued her study of Russian secretly, teaching Russian folk songs to older Jewish girls in exchange for their volumes of Tolstoy, Gorky, and Turgenev.

Before she was in her teens, Clara was sewing buttonholes on shirts to pay for her reading habit. Already fluent in written Yiddish, she fattened her book fund by writing letters for illiterate mothers to send to their children in America. When her father found a cache of books hidden beneath a meat pan in the kitchen, he burned the whole lot and Clara had to start collecting again. She began storing books in the attic, where she would perch on a bare beam to read. One Sabbath afternoon, while her family dozed, she was discovered by a neighbor. He not only kept her secret, but lent her revolutionary tracts from his own collection. By the time the Kishinev pogrom of 1903 convinced her parents to immigrate to the United States, seventeen-year-old Clara was a committed revolutionary. (endquote) http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/shavelson-clara-lemlich

Clara is probably best known for the speech she gave in Yiddish exhorting her fellow garment workers to strike and inciting what became known as the Uprising of 20,000.

From American Experience: Clara Lemlich | Triangle Fire (quote): As she stood in front of thousands of her fellow female workers at the Cooper Union in New York City, speaking in her native Yiddish language, she demanded swift action. "I am a working girl," proclaimed Lemlich. "One of those who are on strike against intolerable conditions. I am tired of listening to speakers who talk in general terms. What we are here for is to decide whether we shall strike or shall not strike. I offer a resolution that a general strike be declared now." After a prolonged roar of approval, Lemlich and the thousands in attendance took a Yiddish oath to strike the following day, pledging, "If I turn traitor to the cause I now pledge, may this hand wither from the arm I now raise."

The next morning, Lemlich and 15,000 factory workers stood in the streets of New York to protest wages and working conditions. This strike, later dubbed the Uprising of the Twenty Thousand, lasted for over two months and transformed the culture of the industrial worker. Protestors won concessions from several factories for fair wages and shorter hours. Lemlich had not only started a protest, but she had also instigated a worker's revolution.

… In 1913, Lemlich married Joe Shavelson, a printer's union activist, and together they had three children. She continued to speak on behalf of several causes, and she lead a nationwide food strike in response to inflated prices during World War I. Throughout the 1940's Lemlich served on the American Committee to Survey Trade Union Conditions in Europe, and became an organizer for the American League against War and Fascism. Due to her earlier involvement in the Communist Party, Lemlich and her family were monitored by the House of Un-American Activities Committee throughout the 1950s. Lemlich officially retired from the ILGWU in 1954. She died on July 12, 1982. (endquote)

From the New York Times (quote): Later in life, her own union said she had not put enough time in for a pension. Living in a nursing home, she urged the workers there to organize. In her 1965 letter, Mrs. Lemlich Shavelson concluded by writing, “In so far as I am concerned, I am still at it.” (endquote). http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/one-woman-who-changed-the-rules/

Unlike most of the Awesome Women I profile, there is a ton of information out there about Clara. She’s really something, and I highly recommend reading more about her.

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/one-woman-who-changed-the-rules/

http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/shavelson-clara-lemlich

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/biography/triangle-lemlich/

http://icarusfilms.com/new2005/clar.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clara_Lemlich

WGBH American Experience . Triangle Fire | PBS

www.pbs.org

Biography: Clara Lemlich

Samantha Bee

Today Tuesday September 4, 2012 the AWU Woman of the Day is Samantha Bee. She is a correspondent for the Daily Show and is brilliant. Why is she the WOD? Because she has more balls than most men I know and she is entertaining as hell.

Daily Show: RNC 2012 - The Road to Jeb Bush 2016 - The Republican Platform

www.thedailyshow.com

Regarding abortion, RNC attendees recognize Mitt Romney's right to choose, but not Samantha Bee's.

Molly Ivins

Today's Awesome Woman of the Day is one who has been celebrated before but . . .
It's the birthday of the journalist and humorist who said, "The thing about democracy, beloveds, is that it is not neat, orderly, or quiet. It requires a certain relish for confusion." Molly Ivins, born in Monterey, California (1944) and raised in Houston, Texas. She went to Smith and to Columbia's School of Journalism and spent years covering the police beat for the Minneapolis Tribune (the first woman to do so) before moving back to Texas, the setting and subject of much of her life's writing. In a biographical blurb she wrote about herself for a Web site, she proclaimed, "Molly Ivins is a nationally syndicated political columnist who remains cheerful despite Texas politics. She emphasizes the more hilarious aspects of both state and national government, and consequently never has to write fiction."

Ivins especially liked to poke fun at the Texas Legislature, which she referred to as "the Lege." She gave George W. Bush the nickname "Shrub" and also referred to him as a post turtle (based on an old joke: the turtle didn't get there itself, doesn't belong there, and needs help getting out of the dilemma). She had actually known President Bush since they were teenagers in Houston. She poked fun at Democrats, too, and said about Bill Clinton: "If left to my own devices, I'd spend all my time pointing out that he's weaker than bus-station chili. But the man is so constantly subjected to such hideous and unfair abuse that I wind up standing up for him on the general principle that some fairness should be applied. Besides, no one but a fool or a Republican ever took him for a liberal." Clinton later said that Molly Ivins "was good when she praised me and painfully good when she criticized me."

Her fiery liberal columns caused a lot of debate in Texas, with newspaper readers always writing in to complain. One time, she wrote about the Republican congressman from Dallas: "If his IQ slips any lower we'll have to water him twice a day." It generated a storm of controversy, and the paper she wrote for decided to use it to their advantage, to boost readership. They started placing advertisements on billboards all over Dallas that said, "Molly Ivins can't say that ... can she?" She used the line as the title of her first book (published in 1991).

She went on to write several best-selling books, including Shrub: The Short but Happy Political Life of George W. Bush — which was actually written and published in 2000, before George W. Bush had been elected to the White House. Ivins later said, "The next time I tell you someone from Texas should not be president of the United States, please, pay attention."

Molly Ivins died of breast cancer in 2007 at the age of 62. She once wrote: "Having breast cancer is massive amounts of no fun. First they mutilate you; then they poison you; then they burn you. I have been on blind dates better than that."

Molly Ivins once said: "I am not anti-gun. I'm pro-knife. Consider the merits of the knife. In the first place, you have to catch up with someone in order to stab him. A general substitution of knives for guns would promote physical fitness. We'd turn into a whole nation of great runners. Plus, knives don't ricochet. And people are seldom killed while cleaning their knives."

Mamie Carthan Till Mobley

The Awesome Woman of the Day for Wednesday, August 29, 2012 is U.S. civil rights activist Mamie Carthan Till Mobley (born November 23, 1921, died January 6, 2003), the mother of Emmett Till.

She was born near a tiny town in Mississippi to strict fundamentalist parents and married Louis Till at age 18. They had Emmett nine months later, and Louis shipped out for WWII
while Emmett was still an infant. Louis and Mamie separated, and Louis was killed 3 years later.

Mamie wasn’t involved in the civil rights movement until Emmett was murdered, and if the case had been handled differently, maybe she never would have been, but that’s not how it went. After learning that her only child had been dragged from his bed, beaten, shot, and dumped in the river, she went to the mortician’s to see her son’s body and the mortician refused. She insisted, and she took Emmett’s body back to Chicago for an open casket funeral, where about 50,000 people saw his battered face and a picture taken there was widely circulated.

The Black Collegian Online states the importance of the funeral and picture as follows:

The murder of Emmett Till was the first media event of the Civil Rights Movement. It demonstrated the horrors of racism in an event circulated throughout America and around the world. African Americans clearly understood that all African Americans were under attack, that no African-American male in the South was safe. The murder of Emmett Louis Till was to African Americans what the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was to Americans in December 1941, or the attack of 9/11 to Americans of our own day. We therefore take refuge in telling you what happened only because why it happened is too difficult to handle, so irrational as to be incomprehensible. 

"When people saw what had happened to my son, men stood up who had never stood up before."
—Mamie Till Bradley, Emmett's mother

For more information:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-03-16-emmett-till_x.htm
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=7099864
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/till/sfeature/sf_remember.html

Marianne Williamson

Today Tuesday August 28, 2012 the AWOD is Marianne Williamson born on July 8, 1952, she is an internationally acclaimed author and lecturer who has published several books, including New York Times best-sellers “A Return to Love “ and “Everyday Grace “. “A Return to Love” is considered a must-read of The New Spirituality. A paragraph from that book, beginning "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure..." - often misattributed to Nelson Mandela's Inaugural address - is considered an anthem for a contemporary generation of seekers.

Marianne is a native of Houston, Texas. In 1989, she founded Project Angel Food, a meals-on-wheels program that serves homebound people with AIDS in the Los Angeles area. Today, Project Angel Food serves over 1,000 people daily.

In December 2006, a NEWSWEEK magazine poll named Marianne Williamson one of the fifty most influential baby boomers. According to Time magazine, "Yoga, the Cabala and Marianne Williamson have been taken up by those seeking a relationship with God that is not strictly tethered to Christianity."

A teacher in the Unity Church, Williamson's philosophy adopts a New Thought approach to spirituality. She tries to incorporate ideals originally established in Christianity and Judaism with a new-age light, using statements such as "You've committed no sins, just mistakes." She also promotes tenets of Zen Buddhism such as the belief that one must empty his or her mind through enlightenment to truly find God.

“I don’t think making love the new bottom line is naïve; I believe that thinking we can survive the next hundred years doing anything less is naïve.”—Marianne Williamson

"In every community there is work to be done. In every nation, there are wounds to heal. In every heart there is the power to do it." —Marianne Williamson

Mary Church Terrell

The Awesome Woman of the Day is Mary Church Terrell, U.S. Civil Rights and Voting Rights Activist (September 23, 1863 – July 24, 1954), daughter of former slaves, and one of the first African-American women to earn a college degree. She became a teacher, fought for social and educational reform, and was the first president of the National Association of Colored Women.

For more information, see http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/aap/terrell.html
http://www.biography.com/people/mary-church-terrell-9504299

Phyllis Diller

Today Tuesday August 21, 2012 the AWOD is Phyllis Diller, Actress and comedian born in Lima, Ohio in 1917 and passed away yesterday 8-20-2012 at the ripe old age of 95.

I was lucky enough to have seen her perform in person when I was a kid. I am sure her act was completely inappropriate for 3 small children but I will never forget how grown up I felt for my dad taking us. I recall it was an outdoor venue, a fair of some kind perhaps. I vividly remember her wild hair, the amazingly loud muumuu she was wearing, the cigarette she was smoking through one of those extenders, the excessive amount of make-up she had on and that laugh, that distinctive infectious laugh of hers. I could not have been any more than 8 or 9 but I remember that day, I remember her, the incomparable Phyllis Diller. That is all anyone can ask for right? To have people remember you? She was memorable for so many reasons. Her son said that she died peacefully with a smile on her face. What a gift, to be at such peace in the end to know that you have lived your life well and to be happy when it is all over. I wish that for all of us.

Phyllis Diller came into the comedy business later in her life, at the age of 37. In 1955 she was working as a journalist and was a contestant on the Groucho Marx show "You bet your life", she was such a hit that she was offered a spot to do stand up comedy. She talked about being a mother, a housewife and about her fictitious husband “Fang”. She talked about things that women not dare talk about in public; she said what many women were thinking but wouldn’t dare say out loud. She was the original “Roseanne”. She was an instant hit and her long successful career was born.

“My cooking is so bad my kids thought Thanksgiving was to commemorate Pearl Harbor.” 

“We spend the first twelve months of our children's lives teaching them to walk and talk and the next twelve telling them to sit down and shut up.” 

"I still take the pill 'cause I don't want any more grandchildren." 

"The older I get, the funnier I get. Think what I'll save in not having my face lifted."
“My photographs don't do me justice - they just look like me.”

Thanks for the laughs Phyllis, R.I.P.

Here is a brief synopsis of her life, enjoy:

http://www.biography.com/people/phyllis-diller-9542308

Megan Gillespie Rice

The Awesome Woman of the Day for Wednesday, August 15, 2012, is Megan Gillespie Rice, born January 31, 1930, in the news recently for breaking into one of the USA’s highest security plants – a nuclear weapons facility – and vandalized the crap out of it.

She grew up in Manhattan, NY, USA, went to Catholic Schools, and joined the Sisters of the Holy Child Jesus when she turned 18.

Rice then studied biology and received degrees in biology from Villanova and Boston College. From 1962 to 2004, with occasional breaks, she served her order as a teacher in Nigeria and Ghana.

In the 1980s she joined the anti-war movement, and since then has engaged in protests against a variety of American military actions, military sites, and nuclear installations. Rice has been arrested more than three dozen times in acts of civil disobedience, including her anti-nuclear activism and protests against the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia. She has served two six-month prison sentences resulting from trespasses during protests against the School of the Americas in 1997-99. [Wikipedia, supra.]

On July, 28, 2012, Sister Megan and two other protesters, Michael Walli, 63, and Greg Boertje-Obed, 57, cut through perimeter fences to reach the outer wall of a building where highly enriched uranium, a key nuclear bomb component, is stored.

The activists painted slogans and threw what they said was human blood on the wall of the facility before they were arrested shortly before 4.30am last Saturday.

Helen Gurley Brown

Today Tuesday August 14, 2012 the AWOD is Helen Gurley Brown born February 18, 1922 and passed yesterday August 13, 2012 at the ripe old age of 90. She was an American author, publisher, businesswoman and was editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine for 32 years. She wrote “Sex and the Single Girl” which at the time was taboo to discuss the fact that single women had SEX let alone the fact that they actually may have enjoyed it! As the editor-in-chief of Cosmo she informed women on how they too could enjoy this thing called sex, it wasn’t just for the mans pleasure anymore.



Here then are some of Gurley Brown's wisest, funniest and most outrageous quotes.

Helen on money:

“Money, if it does not bring you happiness, will at least help you be miserable in comfort.”

Helen on being bad:

“Good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere.”

Helen on vanity:

“One of the paramount reasons for staying attractive is so you can have somebody to go to bed with.”

Helen on humble beginnings:

“Nearly every glamorous, wealthy, successful career woman you might envy now started out as some kind of schlep.”

Helen on having it all:

“The message was: So you're single. You can still have sex. You can have a great life. And if you marry, don't just sponge off a man or be the gold-medal-winning mother. Don't use men to get what you want in life - - get it for yourself.”

Helen on feminism:

“Cosmo is feminist in that we believe women are just as smart and capable as men and can achieve anything they want. But it also acknowledges that while work is important, men are, too. The Cosmo girl absolutely loves men!”

Helen on listening:

“Never fail to know that if you are doing all the talking, you are boring somebody.”

Helen on her wilder side:

“I was mousy on the outside but inside I'm this tiger and I have to get on with it.”

Helen on husbands:

"Marry a decent, good, kind person who will cherish you."

Helen on sex:

"If only one of you is in the mood, do it. Even if sex isn’t great every time, it's a unique form of communication and togetherness that can help you stay together with a good degree of contentment."

Helen on success:

“I hope I have convinced you—the only thing that separates successful people from the ones who aren’t is the willingness to work very, very hard.”



Here is a great article about her in the NY times…no matter what women may have thought about her, she was bold and groundbreaking for sure.

Anne McCarty Braden

Anne McCarty Braden, born July 28, 1924 in Louisville, KY, died March 6, 2006, was an ass-kicking anti-segregationist in a distinctly hostile environment.

From Wikipedia: Anne McCarty Braden (July 28, 1924 – March 6, 2006) was an American advocate of racial equality. Born in Louisville, Kentucky, and raised in rigidly segregated Anniston, Alabama, Braden grew up in a white middle-class family that accepted southern racial mores wholeheartedly.[1] A devout Episcopalian, Braden was bothered by racial segregation, but never questioned it until her college years at Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in Virginia. After working on newspapers in Anniston and Birmingham, Alabama, she returned to Kentucky as a young adult to write for the Louisville Times. There, she met and in 1948 married fellow newspaperman Carl Braden, a left-wing trade unionist. She became a supporter of the civil rights movement at a time when it was unpopular among southern whites.

For more information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Braden

http://media.gfem.org/node/10765

http://www.ket.org/civilrights/bio_braden.htm

Timeline Photos

Anne Braden was the first recipient of the American Civil Liberties Union Roger ...