Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Lucy Burns


Today, Tuesday July 30, 2012 the AWOD is Lucy Burns. She worked in the English and US suffrage movements. She was also the suffragist with the most jail time in England and the US.

Lucy Burns was born in Brooklyn, New York City, on July 28, 1879. An Irish Catholic, Burns studied at Vassar and Yale Graduation School before teaching English at Erasmus High School.

In 1906 Burns moved to Germany to study languages. This included spells at the University of Berlin (1906-1908) and the University of Bonn (1908) before continuing her studies at Oxford University.

While in England, Burns joined the Women's Social and Political Union(WSPU) and her activities resulted in her being arrested and imprisoned. She met Alice Paul, another American working with the WSPU and when they returned home the United States they formed the Congressional Union for Women Suffrage (CUWS).

Burns and Paul attempted to introduce the militant methods used by theWomen's Social and Political Union in Britain. This included organizing huge demonstrations and the daily picketing of the White House. Over the next couple of years the police arrested nearly 500 women for loitering and 168 were jailed for "obstructing traffic". Paul was sentenced to seven months imprisonment but after going on hunger strike she was released.

After the United States joined the First World War in 1917, Burns was continually assaulted by patriotic male bystanders, while picketing outside the White House. Arrested several times, she spent more time in prison than any other American suffragist. Doris Stevens claimed that Lucy Barnes became the most important figure in the militant campaign: "It fell to Lucy Burns, vice-chairman of the organization, to be the leader of the new protest. Miss Burns is in appearance the very symbol of woman in revolt. Her abundant and glorious red hair burns and is not consumed - a flaming torch.... Musical, appealing, persuading - she could move the most resistant person. Her talent as an orator is of the kind that makes for instant intimacy with her audience. Her emotional quality is so powerful that her intellectual capacity, which is quite as great, is not always at once perceived."

Burns retired from political life after women in the United States got the vote. She was reported as saying: “I don’t want to do anything more. I think we have done all this for women, and we have sacrificed everything we possessed for them, and now let them fight for it now. I am not going to fight anymore.”

Lucy Burns died Brooklyn, New York City, on 22nd December, 1966.

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Svetlana Savitskaya



On July 25, 1984, Svetlana Savitskaya (August 8, 1948 - ), soviet cosmonaut, walked in space – the first woman ever to do so. She was the second woman in space, the first having been another soviet woman named Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova.

Unlike Valentina Tereshkova, who had been a textile worker and amateur parachutist before being recruited as a cosmonaut, Savitskaya was a pilot who set world records in supersonic and turboprop aircraft. She set a record skydiving when she was only 17, falling 14km before opening her parachute at about 500 meters.

As we say goodbye to Awesome Woman Sally Ride, I just felt like it was also important to acknowledge that, like all of us, she was an Awesome Woman among Awesome Women.

http://great.russian-women.net/Svetlana_Savitskaya.shtml

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

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Jessica Ghawi


Today Tuesday July 24, 2012 the AWOD is Jessica Ghawi age 24, her life was cut short by a madman with a bullet last Friday in Aurora Colorado. She was an aspiring Sports Newscaster.

Just a month ago she narrowly escaped a mass shooting in Toronto. An experience she blogged about:

She wrote that at 6:20 p.m., she bought a burger but instead of sitting down to eat it at the Eaton Centre food court, she went outside to get some fresh air.

"The gunshots rung out at 6:23," she wrote. "Had I not gone outside, I would've been in the midst of gunfire."

"I was shown how fragile life was on Saturday," Jessica wrote. "I saw the terror on bystanders' faces. I saw the victims of a senseless crime. I saw lives change. I was reminded that we don't know when or where our time on Earth will end. When or where we will breathe our last breath."

Jessica’s brother Jordan wants her and the other victims to be known and their lives to be celebrated. He wants people to know the kind of person his sister was and what better way to do that than to make her our AWOD.

While studying at The University of Texas at San Antonio, Ghawi interned at Ticket 760 Radio and KABB-TV, where her bubbly personality and ambition made her an indispensable member of both teams. Another internship would take her from San Antonio to Denver, where Ghawi joined the staff at Sports Radio 104.3 The Fan. An avid hockey fan, Ghawi was excited to cover The Colorado Avalanche for the station.

She used the pen name Redfield in honor of her grandmother, who always wanted to be a journalist, but "never had the chance," she once shared.

Peter Burns, morning show host of Denver's Mile High Sports, described Jessica as a "vibrant and full of life." She was a die-hard hockey fan. Burns said she dreamed of starting a charity to help the victims of the Colorado wildfires." Even if she could just help three or four families, that would have been great. That was the kind of person she was," he said.

Jessica’s brother Jordan Ghawi wants to move the focus from the tragedy to Jessica's life.

In his words “My sister is a fighter... she's listened to her heart, I want people to remember that heart and remember the good things that she's done; remember that smile and what her possibilities, what her prospectives, what she could have done in the future.

So here is to Jessica Ghawi, she will not be forgotten.

Friday, July 20, 2012

Sarah Brady

I had another thought about today's Awesome woman, but this morning's headlines changed my mind. Today is for Sarah Brady, if we have featured her before, I think today begs another shot, pun intended. 

And for those interested, Wikipedia has VERY little on her.

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Alice Dunbar-Nelson

The Awesome Woman of the Day for Wednesday, July 18, 2012 is Alice Dunbar-Nelson, U.S. poet, teacher, political activist (1875 to 1935).

She was born Alice Ruth Moore on July 19, 1875 in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA to Creole parents. Her mother was a former slave who became a seamstress; her father may have been a merchant marine. Lee-Keller, Helen, 2011. "Alice Dunbar-Nelson," KnowLA Encyclopedia of Louisiana: http://www.knowla.org/entry.php?rec=641. Alice graduated from high school at age 14 and went to Straight College, where she earned a teaching certificate. She was teaching in the New Orleans public schools when her first book of short stories was published. She moved to New York and continued her education at Columbia, University of Pennsylvania, and Cornell, where she earned her M.A.

She married poet Paul Laurence Dunbar when she was 23, moving to Washington D.C. to be with him. The marriage ended badly four years later,amid rumo
rs of domestic violence (him) and same sex affairs (her). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Dunbar_Nelson. They never officially divorced, and Dunbar died in 1906. Id.

After Dunbar-Nelson and Dunbar separated, she moved to Delaware and returned to teaching at Howard High School and then Howard University, where she met and married a fellow professor. That marriage also ended in divorce, and in 1916, Alice married poet and activist Robert J. Nelson. She help found and co-edited The Wilmington Advocate, a newspaper promoting racial equality and uplift., and she became active in the anti-lynching movement and the women's suffrage movement. Id.

Dunbar-Nelson saved on the Women's Committee on the Council of Defense and the American Friends Interracial Peace Committee Lee-Keller, supra.

She died at the age of 60 from a heart ailment. Wikipedia, supra.

For more information:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Dunbar_Nelson
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/a_f/dunbar-nelson/about.htm
http://www.knowla.org/entry.php?rec=641

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Dorothy Schroeder


Today Tuesday July 17, 2012 the AWOD is Dorothy Schroeder born in Champaign, Illinois April 11, 1928. I was inspired from our recent trip to the Louisville Slugger Museum/Factory. I have always been a baseball fan and I played softball my entire childhood and continued into adulthood. You may know Dottie from one of my favorite movies of all time “A League of their own”. Dottie was played by Gina Davis and I must say the casting was spot on, she looks just like her! There was a display at the factory of a uniform from the “All American Girls Professional Baseball League” and a photo of “Dottie”.

The youngest player in AAGPBL history, Dorothy “Dottie” Schroeder was 15 years old when she started her professional career with the South Bend Blue Sox. She holds the record for most games played (1,249) and was the only woman to play in all 12 seasons of the AAGPBL. She racked up the most career RBI’s in the league with 431, and was also a stellar shortstop described as a “vacuum”. Schroeder, who never married, is one of the few All-Americans pictured individually in the exhibit on Women in Baseball at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York, which was created in 1988. She lived the rest of her life in her homeland of Champaign, working for Collegiate Cap & Gown Company for 36 years until retiring in 1993. She died three years later, at the age of 68, following complications of a brain aneurysm.

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

Friday, July 13, 2012

Barbara Boxer

Awesome woman of the day is Barbara Boxer.

Barbara Boxer is one of 'my' senators and as do all politicians she has flaws, but for the most part she is a fighter for women's and human rights, the environment and most of what I believe. She is unafraid and when I found out she is a minute 4'11" I thought, WOW she really packs a lot into those less than 5'! She's backed many a senator and /or nominee into a a verbal corner with her fierce questioning. I wish we had more of her in the Senate!

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Sylvia Vanderpool Robinson


The awesome woman of the day for Wednesday, July 4, 2012, is Sylvia Vanderpool Robinson, U.S. singer, record producer, and record label executive. Born March 6, 1934, NYC, NY, USA. Died September 29, 2011, Secaucus, NJ, USA.

Sylvia was probably best known as the Sylvia in Mickey and Sylvia ("Love is Strange")

However, Love is Strange is NOT the reason I am profiling her today. I learned this morning that Ms. Robinson was a co-founder of Sugar Hill records, that she co-wrote and produced "The Message":


... and that she was the genius who, the story goes, recruited the rappers on Rappers’ Delight by having her son drive her around Englewood, NJ. 

At the time, the conventional music industry wisdom was that the live energy of rap was impossible to capture on vinyl. Nevertheless, one hot August night in 1979 Robinson made her son Joey drive her around Englewood, New Jersey, looking for rappers. 
He told NPR in 2000 that he took his mother to a pizza place and introduced her to Henry Jackson. "He closed the pizza parlor down," said Joey Robinson about the man who would become Big Bank Hank. "He's got all this dough on him. He weighs about 300 to 400 pounds at the time. And he jumps in the back of my Oldsmobile and starts rapping."

The Robinsons kept driving around, people kept hopping into the car and The Sugarhill Gang was born. 
None of the rappers had ever worked together before. In the studio, Sylvia Robinson cued each one by pointing at them, and they recorded "Rapper's Delight" in one uninterrupted 14-minute take. Robinson personally mailed the single to radio stations and badgered them to play it. 
So much for conventional wisdom.

For more information:

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Pearl S. Buck


Today July 3, 2012 the AWOD is writer Pearl S. Buck born Pearl Comfort Sydenstricker on June 26, 1892, in Hillsboro, West Virginia. Buck spent a major part of her life in China and the subject-matter of books was Chinese rural life. Her most popular novel, The Good Earth, earned a Pulitzer Prize in 1932. She was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938.

“Let woman out of the home, let man into it, should be the aim of education. The home needs man, and the world outside needs woman.”

Her parents, Absalom and Caroline Sydenstricker, were Southern Presbyterian missionaries, stationed in China. Pearl was the fourth of seven children (and one of only three who would survive to adulthood). She was born when her parents were near the end of a furlough in the United States; when she was three months old, she was taken back to China, where she spent most of the first forty years of her life.

The Sydenstrickers lived in Chinkiang (Zhenjiang), in Kiangsu (Jiangsu) province, then a small city lying at the junction of the Yangtze River and the Grand Canal. Pearl's father spent months away from home, itinerating in the Chinese countryside in search of Christian converts; Pearl's mother ministered to Chinese women in a small dispensary she established.

From childhood, Pearl spoke both English and Chinese. She was taught principally by her mother and by a Chinese tutor, Mr. Kung. In 1900, during the Boxer Uprising, Caroline and the children evacuated to Shanghai, where they spent several anxious months waiting for word of Absalom's fate. Later that year, the family returned to the US for another home leave.

In 1910, Pearl enrolled in Randolph-Macon Woman's College, in Lynchburg, Virginia, from which she graduated in 1914. Although she had intended to remain in the US, she returned to China shortly after graduation when she received word that her mother was gravely ill. In 1915, she met a young Cornell graduate, an agricultural economist named John Lossing Buck. They married in 1917, and immediately moved to Nanhsuchou (Nanxuzhou) in rural Anhwei (Anhui) province. In this impoverished community, Pearl Buck gathered the material that she would later use in The Good Earth and other stories of China.

From 1920 to 1933, Pearl and Lossing made their home in Nanking (Nanjing), on the campus of Nanking University, where both had teaching positions. In 1921, Pearl's mother died and shortly afterwards her father moved in with the Bucks. The tragedies and dislocations which Pearl suffered in the 1920s reached a climax in March, 1927, in the violence known as the "Nanking Incident." In a confused battle involving elements of Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist troops, Communist forces, and assorted warlords, several Westerners were murdered. The Bucks spent a terrified day in hiding, after which they were rescued by American gunboats. After a trip downriver to Shanghai, the Buck family sailed to Unzen, Japan, where they spent the following year. They then moved back to Nanking, though conditions remained dangerously unsettled.

Pearl had begun to publish stories and essays in the 1920s, in magazines such as Nation, The Chinese Recorder, Asia, and Atlantic Monthly. Her first novel, East Wind, West Wind, was published by the John Day Company in 1930. John Day's publisher, Richard Walsh, would eventually become Pearl's second husband, in 1935, after both received divorces.

In 1931, John Day published Pearl's second novel, The Good Earth. This became the best-selling book of both 1931 and 1932, won the Pulitzer Prize and the Howells Medal in 1935, and would be adapted as a major MGM film in 1937. Other novels and books of non-fiction quickly followed. In 1938, less than a decade after her first book had appeared, Pearl won the Nobel Prize in literature, the first American woman to do so. By the time of her death in 1973, Pearl would publish over seventy books: novels, collections of stories, biography and autobiography, poetry, drama, children's literature, and translations from the Chinese.

In 1934, because of conditions in China, and also to be closer to Richard Walsh and her daughter Carol, whom she had placed in an institution in New Jersey, Pearl moved permanently to the US. She bought an old farmhouse, Green Hills Farm, in Bucks County, PA. She and Richard adopted six more children over the following years. Green Hills Farm is now on the Registry of Historic Buildings; fifteen thousand people visit each year.

From the day of her move to the US, Pearl was active in American civil rights and women's rights activities. She published essays in both Crisis, the journal of the NAACP, and Opportunity, the magazine of the Urban League; she was a trustee of Howard University for twenty years, beginning in the early 1940s. In 1942, Pearl and Richard founded the East and West Association, dedicated to cultural exchange and understanding between Asia and the West. In 1949, outraged that existing adoption services considered Asian and mixed-race children unadoptable, Pearl established Welcome House, the first international, inter-racial adoption agency; in the nearly five decades of its work, Welcome House has assisted in the placement of over five thousand children. In 1964, to provide support for Amerasian children who were not eligible for adoption, Pearl also established the Pearl S. Buck Foundation, which provides sponsorship funding for thousands of children in half-a-dozen Asian countries.

Pearl Buck died in March, 1973, just two months before her eighty-first birthday. She is buried at Green Hills Farm.