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 ...

Gabrielle Douglas

Today Tuesday August 7, 2012 the AWOD is Gabrielle Douglas, the first African American to win a gold medal in the Gymnastics individual all-around event. She also won a team gold medal for the U.S. at the 2012 Summer Olympics with teammates Aly Raisman, Kyla Ross, McKayla Maroney and Jordyn Wieber.

American gymnast Gabrielle Christina Victoria Douglas, better known as Gabby Douglas or "Flying Squirrel," was born on December 31, 1995, in Virginia Beach, Virginia, to Timothy Douglas and Natalie Hawkins. Her first experience with gymnastics came at the age of 3, when she perfected a straight cartwheel using a technique that she learned from her older sister, Arielle, a former gymnast. By age 4, Douglas had taught herself how to do a one-handed cartwheel.

Thanks to Arielle's persuasion tactics, Douglas's mother allowed her to begin taking formal gymnastics classes at the age of 6. Only two years later, in 2004, she was named a Virginia State Gymanstics Champion.

When Douglas turned 14, she left her hometown and family, and moved to West Des Moines, Iowa, to train with renowned coach Liang Chow, known for molding American gymnast Shawn Johnson into a world champion and Olympic gold medalist. Travis and Missy Parton volunteered to be Douglas's host family in West Des Moines: According to Douglas's official website, she plays big sister to the Parton's four daughters, one of whom is also a student of Chow's.

Douglas was a member of the U.S. team that won the gold medal in the team finals at the 2011 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Tokyo, Japan. She also won the 2012 Olympic Trials, which took place in San Jose, California, and was selected to the national team to represent the United States at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, England.

Her unique blend of power, flexibility, body alignment and form has led her to be compared with three-time Olympian Dominique Dawes. Douglas is the first African American to make the U.S. Olympic women's gymnastics team since Dawes in 2000. Douglas's high-flying skills and high difficulty score on bars enticed her to U.S. women's national team coordinator Martha Karoyli, who nicknamed her "Flying Squirrel."

Congratulations to Gabby for her groundbreaking achievement and for being an inspiration to all little girls out there who now believe their dreams can come true!

Jeannette Rankin

The Awesome Woman of the Day for Wednesday, August 1, 2012 is Jeannette Rankin. In the USA, most women did not get the right to vote until August 26, 1920; however, some states granted women voting rights earlier than that. In Montana, women gained the right to vote in 1914, and Jeannette Rankin (June 11, 1880 May 18, 1973) became the first woman elected to U.S. Congress in 1916.

She was a pacifist, one of only a few members of Congress to vote against entering World War I and the only one to vote against entering World War II (which probably cost her her seat). Her reasoning was that she, as a woman, could not serve in combat and, thus, had no moral right to send others to die. http://jrpc.org/



For more information:

http://www.biography.com/people/jeannette-rankin-9451806