Geraldine Anne Ferraro (August 26, 1935 – March 26, 2011) was an American attorney, a Democratic Party politician, and a member of the United States House of Representatives. She was the first female Vice Presidential candidate representing a major American political party. Ferraro grew up in New York City and became a teacher and lawyer. She joined the Queens County District Attorney's Office in 1974, where she headed the new Special Victims Bureau that dealt with sex crimes, child abuse, and domestic violence. She was elected to the House in 1978, where she rose rapidly in the party hierarchy while focusing on legislation to bring equity for women in the areas of wages, pensions, and retirement plans. In 1984, former Vice President and presidential candidate Walter Mondale selected Ferraro to be his running mate in the upcoming election. In doing so she became the only Italian American to be a major-party national nominee in addition to being the first woman. The positive polling the Mondale-Ferraro ticket received when she joined faded as questions about her and her husband's finances arose. In the general election, Mondale and Ferraro were defeated in a landslide by incumbent President Ronald Reagan and Vice President George H. W. Bush. Ferraro ran campaigns for a seat in the United States Senate from New York in 1992 and 1998, both times starting as the front-runner for her party's nomination before losing in the primary election. She served as a United States Ambassador to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights from 1993 until 1996, in the presidential administration of Bill Clinton. She also continued her career as a journalist, author, and businesswoman, and served in the 2008 presidential campaign of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. Ferraro died on March 26, 2011, from multiple myeloma, 12 years after being diagnosed. If you're a fan of Law & Order SVU: thank Geraldine Ferraro. She was the first head of the Queens County District Attorney's Office Special Victims Bureau in 1974. There is a lot of information about her life here.
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Dr. Maya Angelou is one of the most renowned and influential voices of our time. Hailed as a global renaissance woman, Dr. Angelou is a celebrated poet, memoirist, novelist, educator, dramatist, producer, actress, historian, filmmaker, and civil rights activist. Born on April 4th, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri, Dr. Angelou was raised in St. Louis and Stamps, Arkansas. In Stamps, Dr. Angelou experienced the brutality of racial discrimination, but she also absorbed the unshakable faith and values of traditional African-American family, community, and culture. As a teenager, Dr. Angelou’s love for the arts won her a scholarship to study dance and drama at San Francisco’s Labor School. At 14, she dropped out to become San Francisco’s first African-American female cable car conductor. She later finished high school, giving birth to her son, Guy, a few weeks after graduation. As a young single mother, she supported her son by working as a waitress and cook, however her passion for music, dance, performance, and poetry would soon take center stage. In 1954 and 1955, Dr. Angelou toured Europe with a production of the opera Porgy and Bess. She studied modern dance with Martha Graham, danced with Alvin Ailey on television variety shows and, in 1957, recorded her first album, Calypso Lady. In 1958, she moved to New York, where she joined the Harlem Writers Guild, acted in the historic Off-Broadway production of Jean Genet's The Blacks and wrote and performed Cabaret for Freedom. In 1960, Dr. Angelou moved to Cairo, Egypt where she served as editor of the English language weeklyThe Arab Observer. The next year, she moved to Ghana where she taught at the University of Ghana's School of Music and Drama, worked as feature editor for The African Review and wrote for The Ghanaian Times. During her years abroad, Dr. Angelou read and studied voraciously, mastering French, Spanish, Italian, Arabic and the West African language Fanti. While in Ghana, she met with Malcolm X and, in 1964, returned to America to help him build his new Organization of African American Unity. Shortly after her arrival in the United States, Malcolm X was assassinated, and the organization dissolved. Soon after X's assassination, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. asked Dr. Angelou to serve as Northern Coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. King's assassination, falling on her birthday in 1968, left her devastated. With the guidance of her friend, the novelist James Baldwin, she began work on the book that would become I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Published in 1970, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was published to international acclaim and enormous popular success. The list of her published verse, non-fiction, and fiction now includes more than 30 bestselling titles. A trailblazer in film and television, Dr. Angelou wrote the screenplay and composed the score for the 1972 film Georgia, Georgia. Her script, the first by an African American woman ever to be filmed, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. She continues to appear on television and in films including the landmark television adaptation of Alex Haley's Roots (1977) and John Singleton's Poetic Justice(1993). In 1996, she directed her first feature film,Down in the Delta. In 2008, she composed poetry for and narrated the award-winning documentary The Black Candle, directed by M.K. Asante. Dr. Angelou has served on two presidential committees, was awarded the Presidential Medal of Arts in 2000, the Lincoln Medal in 2008, and has received 3 Grammy Awards. President Clinton requested that she compose a poem to read at his inauguration in 1993. Dr. Angelou's reading of her poem "On the Pulse of the Morning" was broadcast live around the world. Dr. Angelou has received over 30 honorary degrees and is Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University. Dr. Angelou’s words and actions continue to stir our souls, energize our bodies, liberate our minds, and heal our hearts. Antoinette Louisa Brown Blackwell (May 20, 1825-November 5, 1921), a women's rights activist and social reformer, was the first American woman to be ordained as minister by a congregation. Always ahead of her time, she with great difficulty broke trails that other women later more easily followed. She wrote prolifically on religion and science, constructing a theoretical foundation for sexual equality.Antoinette "Nette" Brown was born in Henrietta, New York, the seventh child of Joseph and Abigail Morse Brown. From childhood on Nette preferred writing and men's farm chores to housework. "Sewing was always my detestation," she later wrote. Her family encouraged her studies and her father paid her to help with the threshing. The family's religious background was Liberal Congregationalist, which stressed God's mercy and human initiative, and not the terror of future punishment. Antoinette learned about religion from her grandmother, who read and discussed with the children the Bible and John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. She learned to think of God as a friendly presence. Seeking solitude by day and night in the nearby woods, she discovered, in contemplation of the sky, "a new heaven and a new earth." One Sunday, when Antoinette was eight, a visiting preacher challenged the people of her family's church to give their lives to God. The next Sunday she told her Sunday School teacher that she wanted to be a minister. The teacher firmly dismissed her desire, saying that girls could not be ministers. With the support of her mother, however, Antoinette held fast to her dream. Her mother pinned a small white ribbon inside her collar—something to hold onto when others criticized her or failed to understand. After studying at Monroe County Academy, 1838-40, Brown became a schoolteacher. In 1846 she entered a nondegree literature program at Oberlin College in Ohio. Upon completion in 1847, she asked to enter the Theology Department. Although Oberlin espoused women's education, College officials at first resisted her application. During the three years that she spent studying theology she was constantly reminded by both faculty and fellow students that the Bible did not approve of women speaking in church. She had to get special permission from her professor to speak in class and from the Theological Literary Society to present essays. One of these, an exegesis of 1 Corinthians 14:34, was published in the Oberlin Quarterly Review. She claimed that, in asking women to be silent in church, St. Paul meant only to warn against excesses in public worship. Her article was accompanied by a professor's rebuttal, defining women's rights and duties more conservatively. In 1850, seventeen years after pinning on the white ribbon, Brown completed her theological studies. She was not, however, given a degree. Only decades later did Oberlin award her degrees—an honorary M.A. in 1878, and an honorary D.D. in 1908. The Congregational Church initially denied her a license to preach because she was a woman. A year later they relented and permitted her to preach, although ordination was withheld. For two years Brown traveled, lecturing on reform issues, including women's rights. In an 1852 letter to her friend and classmate from Oberlin, Lucy Stone, Brown recounted "speaking 18 times in 19 days, in Wayne Co." During that lecture tour she missed a stage, walked 7 ½ miles in a snow storm, "took a cold water wash when I got home, and the next morning got up as well as ever without even a stiff joint." Sometimes Brown preached in Unitarian churches, including those of Theodore Parker and William Ellery Channing. Charles A. Dana and Horace Greeley offered her a substantial salary if she would hold Sunday services in a New York City hall. Instead, in 1852 she accepted a call from the Congregational Church of South Butler, New York. Because the Congregational clergy were reluctant to ordain a woman, she was ordained there in 1853 by a Methodist minister. Although later historians would question whether this was the first ordination of a woman, at the time it was recognized as such, and for all her life Brown was known as the first ordained woman. Horace Greeley's New York Tribune reported on the occasion: "it was a new position for woman, and gave promise to her exaltation to that moral and intellectual rank which she was designed to fulfill." Brown entered her ministry with enthusiasm. "The pastoral labors at S. Butler suit me even better than I expected," she wrote, "& my heart is full of hope." She soon officiated at a marriage ceremony in Rochester, New York, the first wedding done by an American woman minister. Chosen by her church a delegate to the 1853 World's Temperance Convention, she was several times shouted down when she attempted to speak. Supported by Greeley's Tribune and members of the Woman's Rights Convention meeting at the same time, she brought a measure of disgrace to the male clergy in attendance who had treated her, and women in general, with disrespect. Brown was unprepared, however, for the openly critical attitudes of women in her parish, who had been long conditioned to regard the minister as a father figure. Further, her sisters in the struggle for women's rights gave her little moral and emotional support. Even her intimate friends in the movement—Lucy Stone, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony—did not think it worthwhile for women to expend effort forcing entrance into an institution as corrupt and outdated as the church. It would be ten years before another woman was ordained. In the meantime Brown had no one to counsel her in a deepening emotional crisis. Exposure to liberal Unitarian theology, particularly regarding salvation and eternal punishment, led Brown to re-examine her beliefs. When two infants died in her parish she could not bring herself to uphold church doctrine by declaring the unbaptized children damned. After just ten months in the parish, she resigned from the South Butler church, citing poor health, but also in doubt about the Congregational creed. A short period of rest at her family's farm in Henrietta improved Brown's health. Anthony encouraged her to help with the campaign for women's right to own property in New York State. Feeling that she was once again needed, Brown began lecturing again for abolition, temperance, and women's rights. Brown spent a year doing volunteer work in the slums and prisons of New York City, 1855-56. She studied causes of mental and social disorder amidst poverty, especially how these affected the lives of women. She wrote a series of articles for the New York Tribune, the first of which focused on the disparity between the "polished, enlightened, civilized Christianized society" and the "shadow of poverty" hovering over the streets and alleys of the city. The collected articles she published as Shadows of Our Social System, 1856. While in New York Brown continued her theological evolution in concert with a new friend, Samuel Charles Blackwell, whom she married in 1856. Samuel, a real estate dealer and hardware salesman, was an abolitionist and the brother of Henry Blackwell, husband of Lucy Stone. Antoinette later wrote, "that [Samuel] was passing through a very similar experience to my own from the orthodoxy of his early training and his earlier years, into a more sanguine religious phase than my own enabled him to become to me a present help in my time of trouble." Prior to their marriage Samuel agreed to Antoinette continuing her lecture tours. When their children were born he helped care for them. She wrote to him before they were married: "We will be governed very much by circumstances and what seems best as the years go by, but I think, Sam we can be self sovereigns, we can bend everything within & without to our wills, and our wills to our intellects." The Blackwells lived most of their married life in New Jersey. Five of their seven children survived infancy: Florence, Edith, Grace, Ethel and Agnes. Mabel died at 3 months of age, and a male child was stillborn. Florence became a Methodist minister, Edith and Ethel became physicians, and Agnes an artist and art teacher. Grace suffered from depression which prevented her from taking on challenging work. In 1860, while Olympia Brown (no relation to Antoinette), later ordained as a Universalist minister, was studying at Antioch College, she invited Blackwell to lecture and preach. The women shared their frustrations with the obstacles placed in their paths and became friends. Antoinette pinned a white ribbon like the one she still wore on Olympia's dress to signify their solidarity. As early as 1853 Blackwell had written that she was not ready to approve of divorce whenever a couple wanted it, even if the husband was a drunkard. "Let them have legal separation but not the right of second marriage." She opposed Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton on this issue at the 1860 National Woman's Rights Convention. "All divorce is naturally and morally impossible," she then argued. Later in life, after her husband died, she wrote, "The family is the basis of civilization" and "must be the most carefully safeguarded." Based upon her own experience, she thought marriage "a life union" and "the most binding of all human pledges." After the Civil War Blackwell lectured on women's struggle for equality and their right to vote. Even though she had a sympathetic husband she still struggled to combine marriage and her "intellectual work." She later wrote to Olympia Brown, "Doubtless the mother of a family can attend to professional duties; but she cannot absorb herself wholly in professional life & Women must bend the professions to themselves and their capacities." In an 1873 paper for the Association for the Advancement of Women she advocated part time work for married women, with their husbands helping out with child care and housework. During the years when she needed to devote the most time to care for her children, Blackwell turned to writing as an occupation which most "easily coincided with family duties." She wrote articles for the Woman's Journal, edited by Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell. Her book, Studies in General Science, 1869, was a compilation of essays written over a decade. In one of these, "The Struggle for Existence", she answered Herbert Spencer who had characterized evolution as the "godless cruelty and wastefulness of the natural world." "The struggle for existence," she wrote, "is but a perfected system of cooperations in which all sentient and unsentient forces mutually co-work in securing the highest ultimate for good." Blackwell pursued the evolutionary topic with The Sexes Throughout Nature, 1875, a corrective to Charles Darwin's Origin of the Species. "Mr. Darwin," she argued, "has failed to hold definitely before the mind the principle that the difference of sex, whatever it may consist in, must itself be subject to natural selection and evolution." In The Physical Basis of Immortality, 1876, Blackwell tried through "the light of established science" and "admitted facts in nature" to prove "the truth that the ultimate elements of Universal Nature are simple and indestructible." She reasoned that the "mind-unit" would be as "tenacious of its continuous maintenance" as metals, rocks, and planets, and would be "able to steadily provide itself with allies which shall outlast the perishable form with which it is temporarily associated." In 1881 Blackwell was one of the few women of her time elected to membership in the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Because of her experience with the South Butler church Blackwell avoided aligning herself with any religious sect until, in early 1878, she and her husband began visiting Unitarian churches in New York City. She applied to the American Unitarian Association and was recognized as a minister later that year. She was, however, discouraged by the lack of opportunities available to her that suited her family situation. By the end of 1879 she had decided to settle for occasional preaching and a resumption of lecture touring. Despite her unusually favorable financial and personal circumstances, Blackwell found herself unable to seriously pursue a full-time professional occupation. Nevertheless she insisted in her 1870s speeches that "women should not be forced to choose between family life and the work they might do beyond the family." In 1893 Blackwell stated at the Parliament of Religions which met during the Columbian Exposition in Chicago: "Women are needed in the pulpit as imperatively and for the same reason that they are needed in the world—because they are women. Women have become—or when the ingrained habit of unconscious imitation has been superseded, they will become—indispensable to the religious evolution of the human race." In 1903 Blackwell helped organize a Unitarian Society in Elizabeth, New Jersey and served as its minister for the first year. In 1908 she was elected minister emeritus. The last surviving delegate to the first national women's rights convention, which had taken place in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1850, in 1920 at the age of ninety-five Blackwell proudly exercised her newly-won right to vote. There are Blackwell Family Papers at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. and at the Schlesinger Library in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The latter collection includes Blackwell's memoirs. A substantial published correspondence is Carol Lasser and Marlene Deahl Merrill, Friends and Sisters: Letters between Lucy Stone and Antoinette Brown Blackwell, 1846-93 (1987). Blackwell's works not mentioned above are The Island Neighbors (1871), The Philosophy of Individuality (1893), Sea Drift (1902), The Making of the Universe (1914), The Social Side of Mind and Action (1915), many speeches, papers, and published articles. The principal modern biography is Elizabeth Cazden, Antoinette Brown Blackwell: A Biography (1983). Useful articles include Dorothy May Emerson, "Representative Women," Occasional Paper #2, Unitarian Universalist Women's Heritage Society (1992), the entry in Catherine F. Hitchings, Universalist and Unitarian Women Ministers (1985), and the entry by Carol Lasser in American National Biography (1999). Much thanks to the fabulous Lella Baker for suggesting Dara Torres as today's woman of the day! Great idea! Dara Torres is arguably the fastest female swimmer in America. She entered her first international swimming competition at age 14 and competed in her first Olympics a few years later in 1984. At the Beijing Games in 2008, Dara became the oldest swimmer to compete in the Olympics. When she took three silver medals – including the infamous heartbreaking 50-meter freestyle race where she missed the Gold by 1/100th of a second – America loved her all the more for her astonishing achievement and her good-natured acceptance of the results. Since her first international race at the age of 14, Dara Torres has proven that she is far from your average athlete. As a student at the University of Florida, she earned the maximum possible number of 28 NCAA All-American swimming awards. As the first US swimmer to compete in four Olympic Games, Dara set three World records and won nine Olympic medals, including four gold. In the Sydney Olympic Games alone, after a seven-year break from competitive swimming, Dara won gold in the 400m freestyle and 400m MR and bronze in the 50m freestyle, 100m freestyle, and the 100m butterfly. After the 2000 Olympics, Dara retired again to start a family, but dove right back into swimming in the 2006 Masters Nationals where she broke a world record, just three weeks after her daughter’s birth. And in August 2007 Dara won another National title and broke her own 7 year old American Record in the 50 Freestyle. Outside of swimming, Dara has made a name for herself as a TV commentator and a print model and was the first athlete to appear in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue in 1994. She was a feature correspondent for Good Morning America, worked on-air for ESPN, TNT and Fox News Channel including stints on NHL Cool Shots and Fox Sports Sunday. Six-time Olympic coach Michael Lohberg described Torres's drive as "just amazing", "To make a run at the Olympics for a 40-year-old mother seems totally out of the question .... But Dara is not measured by normal standards. She is truly an exception, defying several laws of life." (Swimnews.com) Torres has successfully made her comeback to competitive swimming by making her 5th Olympic squad. She won a total of 3 silver medals at the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008. She's in the Bible, she's in your life, she's in the news, she's everywhere--you just have to look. Once you look, you'll find her. In the Bible, she's the woman at the well, and in so many other verses, too. (do we know her name? no.) In your life, she's the one who you go to when you need a moment of sanity or a second opinion on reality. In the news, she's the one behind the shadow, talking in a digital voice. As women, we deserve to be named. So today, I dedicate the blog post to the Nameless Woman--because she's out there, because she's important, because without her--we would be lost. But it's more than that. As women, we have other women in our life who have shaped us, made us who we are, stepped in at just the right moment to give us a boost or guide us on our journey. Some stay for a moment, some stay for a day, some are friends for a lifetime. If you are anything like me, you value the heck out of those people, and you take them for granted at the same time. I often seek them out, the wise women, and I hang around them hoping some of their wisdom will rub off on me. Thankfully, it usually does. If you're reading this blog, it is highly likely that you are one of these women, that you've been one of these people in my life. Thank You. I can't say it enough. Thank you. So tonight, I leave this for you to think about: are these friendships/helpful moments/gifts of grace unique to women? Are we more generous and forgiving with each other? Who has helped you along your path? Who has given you strength? Who has given you courage? Who has given you a shoulder to stand on? A shoulder to cry on? What is her name? How many names are there? This post is for her/them. Say their names. Those of us who pay attention to the issues that we are facing in the United States, especially those concerned with our food supply and the chemicals we encounter on a daily basis should definitely read Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. Rachel Carson, writer, scientist, and ecologist, grew up simply in the rural river town of Springdale, Pennsylvania. Her mother bequeathed to her a life-long love of nature and the living world that Rachel expressed first as a writer and later as a student of marine biology. Carson graduated from Pennsylvania College for Women (now Chatham College) in 1929, studied at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory, and received her MA in zoology from Johns Hopkins University in 1932. She was hired by the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries to write radio scripts during the Depression and supplemented her income writing feature articles on natural history for the Baltimore Sun. She began a fifteen-year career in the federal service as a scientist and editor in 1936 and rose to become Editor-in-Chief of all publications for the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service. She wrote pamphlets on conservation and natural resources and edited scientific articles, but in her free time turned her government research into lyric prose, first as an article "Undersea" (1937, for the Atlantic Monthly), and then in a book, Under the Sea-wind (1941). In 1952 she published her prize-winning study of the ocean, The Sea Around Us, which was followed by The Edge of the Sea in 1955. These books constituted a biography of the ocean and made Carson famous as a naturalist and science writer for the public. Carson resigned from government service in 1952 to devote herself to her writing. She wrote several other articles designed to teach people about the wonder and beauty of the living world, including "Help Your Child to Wonder," (1956) and "Our Ever-Changing Shore" (1957), and planned another book on the ecology of life. Embedded within all of Carson's writing was the view that human beings were but one part of nature distinguished primarily by their power to alter it, in some cases irreversibly. Disturbed by the profligate use of synthetic chemical pesticides after World War II, Carson reluctantly changed her focus in order to warn the public about the long term effects of misusing pesticides. In Silent Spring (1962) she challenged the practices of agricultural scientists and the government, and called for a change in the way humankind viewed the natural world. Carson was attacked by the chemical industry and some in government as an alarmist, but courageously spoke out to remind us that we are a vulnerable part of the natural world subject to the same damage as the rest of the ecosystem. Testifying before Congress in 1963, Carson called for new policies to protect human health and the environment. Rachel Carson died in 1964 after a long battle against breast cancer. Her witness for the beauty and integrity of life continues to inspire new generations to protect the living world and all its creatures. Dr. Ida Sophia Scudder (December 9, 1870 – May 24, 1960) was a third-generation American medical missionary in India of the Reformed Church in America. She dedicated her life to the plight of Indian women and the fight against bubonic plague, cholera and leprosy. In 1918, she started one of Asia's foremost teaching hospitals, the Christian Medical College & Hospital, Vellore, India. She was born of Dr. John Scudder Jr. and his wife, Sophia (née Weld), part of a long line of medical missionaries (see Scudders in India). The granddaughter of John Scudder, Sr., as a child in India, she witnessed the famine, poverty and disease in India. She was invited by Dwight Moody to study at his Northfield Seminary in Massachusetts, where she earned a reputation for pranks. She initially expected to get married and settle down in the United States after seminary, but in 1890 she went back to India to help her father when her mother was ailing at the mission bungalow at Tindivanam. Ida had expressed a resolve not to become a medical missionary, but during that stay, she had the enlightening experience of not being able to help three woman in childbirth who died needlessly in one night. That experience convinced her that God wanted her to become a physician and return to help the women of India. She never married. She graduated from Cornell Medical College, New York City in 1899, as part of the first class at that school that accepted women as medical students. She then headed back to India, fortified with a $10,000 grant from a Mr. Schell, a Manhattan banker, in memory of his wife. With the money, she started a tiny medical dispensary and clinic for women at Vellore, 75 miles from Madras. Her father died in 1900, soon after she arrived in India. In two years she treated 5,000 patients. She opened the Mary Taber Schell Hospital in 1902. Ida Scudder realized that she would be foolish to go on alone in her fight to bring better health to South India's women, so she decided to open a medical school for girls. Skeptical males said she would be lucky to get three applicants; actually she had 151 the first year (1918), and had to turn many away ever since. At first, the Reformed Church in America was the main backer of the Vellore school, but after Dr. Scudder agreed to make it coeducational, it eventually gained the support of 40 missions. Of 242 students today, 95 are men. In 1928 ground was broken for the "Hillsite" medical school campus on 200 acres (0.8 km²) at Bagayam, Vellore. In 1928, Mahatma Gandhi visited the medical school. She traveled a number of times to the United States to raise funds for the college and hospital, raising a total in the millions. In 1945, the college was opened to men as well as women. In 2003 the Vellore Christian Medical Center was the largest Christian hospital in the world, with 2000 beds, and its medical school is now one of the premier medical colleges in India. One day in 1953, aged 82, she was at "Hilltop", her bungalow at Kodaikanal, which overlooked Vellore's Christian Medical College and its hospital, and opened a stack of letters and telegrams. Her name is a famous one in India. A letter once reached her addressed simply, "Dr. Ida, India." But the mail was heavier than usual because friends around the world were congratulating her on winning the Elizabeth Blackwell Citation from the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary, as one of 1952's five outstanding women doctors. She died, aged 89, at her bungalow. A stamp issued on August 12, 2000, as part of centenary celebrations of Christian Medical College, depicts the college chapel, the motivating monument of the medical college and hospital, symbolising the ethos of the institution. The First-day cover portrays Dr Ida Scudder, who founded the institute in 1900, working for the medical requirements of pregnant women. Born on August 27, 1796 in Hatfield, MA just a few miles from Northampton, Sophia Smith was the fourth of seven children -- and the first daughter -- of Joseph Smith, a prosperous farmer, and his wife, Lois White Smith. Few family records survive, so little is known about Sophia Smith's early years. Her journal, which she kept for the last nine years of her life, is primarily a record of her spiritual development but also includes discussions of events of the day, her trips, and the books she was reading. Like many girls of her era, Sophia was given a meager education, yet she read avidly and widely throughout her life. Such passion -- which included poetry and prose, newspapers and magazines of social, political and literary commentary -- not only portended her future contributions but may also have helped her endure the tragedies of adulthood. Of the seven Smith offspring, three died young and only Joseph Jr. married, producing no heirs. Sophia, her sister Harriet and brother Austin shared the family homestead, which still stands at 22 Main Street in Hatfield. Moreover, by the age of 40, Sophia had become quite deaf, and even the use of an ear trumpet did not counter the growing isolation that her hearing loss engendered in the years to follow. She underwent several operations to correct the problem, but these were all unsuccessful. Sophia's father, Joseph, was both prosperous and frugal. After his death, his son Austin shrewdly invested his inheritance in the New York stock market and often traveled there to watch the Smith assets grow. Back in Hatfield, Austin was reputed to be a miser devoid of community spirit. He argued at town meetings against the extravagance of public education and was said to pay board to his sisters to manage the household -- and then charged them a shilling for a ride in the family carriage. At least Austin seemed to come by his penurious ways honestly. His uncle, Oliver Smith, was also renowned in Hatfield for his parsimony. For instance, the elder Smith is said to have employed the village tailoress to turn his coats wrong side out and remake them. Then, when he died, he left a half-million dollars to charity. The Smith Charities is still in operation today, housed in a handsome brownstone building at 51 Main Street in Northampton. Smith Vocational and Agricultural High School, serving students throughout Hampshire County, is also the result of Oliver's benevolence. Harriet Smith's death in 1859, followed by Austin's in 1861, left Sophia wealthy but alone. Her story -- up until this point -- features few variations or opposing theories. It is only here, as she began to plan for the final dispensation of the Smith family fortune, that the tale becomes less clear. Deeply religious, Sophia turned to her pastor, John Morton Greene, as well as other advisers, to discuss her decision. Among the options considered were bequests to Amherst College (Reverend Greene's alma mater) and to the nearby Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, which -- although not a full-fledged college -- was already educating young women. Initially, Sophia settled on a variety of projects, including a school for the deaf -- a logical choice in light of her own struggles with impaired hearing. Thus, Smith College may, at least in part, owe its very existence to the fact that John Clarke died before she did, endowing a school for the deaf (today the acclaimed Clarke School in Northampton) and prompting Sophia to abandon her plan. The "Last Will and Testament of Miss Sophia Smith" was not completed until March of 1870 -- only three months before she died but nine years (and many revisions) after her first meeting about the matter with John Greene. This final version supported "the establishment and maintenance of an Institution for the higher education of young women, with the design to furnish for my own sex means and facilities for education equal to those which are afforded now in our Colleges to young men." The will went on to state: "It is my opinion that by the education of women, what are called their 'wrongs' will be redressed, their wages adjusted, their weight of influence in reforming the evils of society will be greatly increased, as teachers, as writers, as mothers, as members of society, their power for good will be incalculably enlarged... "It is my wish that the institution be so conducted, that during all coming time it shall do the most good to the greatest number. I would have it a perennial blessing to the country and the world." Smith College was chartered in 1871 and opened in 1875. While most would agree that the college embodies the values and vision inherent in its earliest blueprint, some scholars question whether Sophia Smith herself conceived this pathbreaking plan or whether she merely endorsed an idea proposed by Reverend Greene. The wording of the will may likewise be Sophia's own -- or may not be. And while Sophia Smith has been described as yielding and submissive, there is evidence that her interest in women and their academic aspirations was genuine and long-standing. John M. Greene outlived his parishioner by 50 years and recorded the history of the development of the college as he remembered it. The trustees appointed in Sophia's will, including Greene, and the president they hired, L. Clark Seelye, built the college using Sophia's vision as its foundation, and the new institution grew rapidly to be one of the largest and most respected colleges for women in the world. Did you know that the name Isabella is one of the most popular names for kids born in 2012? Yep, it's true. Maybe there are some real women's history geeks out there who decided to name their daughter after the woman I am profiling today... (probably not, but it's a good thought, anyway) Isabella I ( 22 April 1451 – Medina del Campo, 26 November 1504), nicknamed the Catholic, was Queen of Castile and León. She and her husband, Ferdinand II of Aragon, brought stability to the kingdoms that became the basis for the unification of Spain. Later the two laid the foundations for the political unification of Spain under their grandson, Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. After a struggle to claim her right to the throne, she reorganized the governmental system, brought the crime rate to the lowest it had been in years, and pulled the kingdom out of the enormous debt her brother had left behind. Her reforms and those she made with her husband had an influence that extended well beyond the borders of their united kingdoms. Isabella and Ferdinand are known for completing the Reconquista, ordering conversion or exile of their Muslim and Jewish subjects and financing Christopher Columbus' 1492 voyage that led to the opening of the "New World". Isabella was born in Madrigal de las Altas Torres, Ávila to John II of Castile and Isabella of Portugal on April 22, 1451. She was the granddaughter of Henry III of Castile and Catherine of Lancaster. At the time of her birth, her older half brother Enrique (Henry) was in line for the throne before her. Enrique, referred to by the English version of his name, Henry, was 26 at that time and married, but he was childless. Her younger brother Alfonso was born two years later on 17 November 1453 and displaced her in the line of succession. When her father, John II of Castile, died in 1454, Henry became King Henry IV. Isabella and Alfonso were left in Henry's care. Her brother Alfonso, mother, and she then moved to Arévalo. These were times of turmoil for Isabella. Isabella lived with her brother and her mother in a castle in poor conditions, where they also suffered from a shortage of money. Although her father arranged in his will for his children to be financially well taken care of, her half-brother Henry did not comply with their father's wishes, either from a desire to keep his half-siblings restricted or from ineptitude.[3] Even though the living conditions were lackluster, under the careful eye of her mother, Isabella was instructed in lessons of practical piety and in the deep reverence for religion. When King Henry's wife, Queen Joan of Portugal, was about to give birth, Isabella and her brother were summoned to court (Segovia) and taken away from their mother to be under more control and direct supervision by the king and finish their educations. Alfonso was put under the care of a tutor while Isabella became part of the Queen's household. Conditions of Isabella's life improved in Segovia. She always had food and clothing and lived in a castle that was adorned with gold and silver. Isabella's basic education consisted of reading, spelling, writing, grammar, mathematics, art, chess, dancing, embroidery, music, and religious instruction. She and her ladies-in-waiting entertained themselves with art, embroidery, and music. She lived a relaxed lifestyle, but she rarely left Segovia as Henry forbade her from doing so. Her brother was keeping her from the political turmoils going on in the kingdom, though Isabella had full knowledge of what was going on and her role in the feuds.The noblemen who were anxious for power confronted the King, demanding that his younger half brother Infante Alfonso be named his successor. They even went as far as to ask Alfonso to seize the throne. The nobles, now in control of Alfonso and claiming him to be the true heir, clashed with Henry's forces at the Second Battle of Olmedo in 1467. The battle was a draw. Henry agreed to make Alfonso his heir, provided Alfonso would marry his daughter, Joanna. Soon after Alfonso was named Prince of Asturias, the title given to the heir of Castile and Leon, he died, likely of the plague. The nobles who had supported him suspected poisoning. As she had been named in her brother's will as his successor, the nobles asked Isabella to take his place as champion of the rebellion. However, support for the rebels had begun to wane, and Isabella preferred a negotiated settlement to continuing the war. She met with Henry and, at Toros de Guisando, they reached a compromise: the war would stop, Henry would name Isabella his heir instead of Joanna, and Isabella would not marry without Henry's consent but he would not be able to force her to marry against her will. Isabella's side came out with most of what they desired, though they did not go so far as to officially depose Henry: they were not powerful enough to do so, and Isabella did not want to jeopardize the principle of fair inherited succession, since it was upon this idea that she had based her argument for legitimacy as heir. It was under her reign that the expulsion of the Jews from Spain occurred, and the Roman Catholic Inquistion in Spain was instituted. There is so much more history and information on her. You could read wikipedia alone for hours, and that's not even beginning a foray into real history. If you're a european/spanish, and/or colonial US history fan, you should know about her. She definitely changed history. Carol Creighton Burnett (born April 26, 1933) is an American actress, comedian, singer, dancer and writer. Burnett started her career in New York. After becoming a hit on Broadway, she made her television debut. After successful appearances on The Garry Moore Show, Burnett moved to Los Angeles and began an eleven-year run on The Carol Burnett Show which was aired on CBS television from 1967 to 1978. With roots in vaudeville, The Carol Burnett Show was a variety show which combined comedy sketches, song, and dance. The comedy sketches included film parodies and character pieces. Burnett created many characters during the show's television run. Burnett was born in San Antonio, Texas, the daughter of Ina Louise (née Creighton), a publicity writer for movie studios, and Joseph Thomas Burnett, a movie theater manager. Both of her parents suffered from alcoholism, and at a young age she was left with her grandmother, Mabel Eudora White. Her parents divorced in the late 1930s, and Burnett and her grandmother moved to an apartment near her mother’s in an impoverished area of Hollywood. There, they stayed in a boarding house with her younger half-sister Chrissy. When Burnett was in the second grade, she briefly invented an imaginary twin sister named Karen, with Shirley Temple-like dimples. Motivated to further the pretense, Burnett recalled fondly that she "fooled the other boarders in the rooming house where we lived by frantically switching clothes and dashing in and out of the house by the fire escape and the front door. Then I became exhausted and Karen mysteriously vanished." For a while, she worked as an usherette at what is now the Hollywood Pacific Theatre (the forecourt of which is now the location of her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame; see the section in the theatre's article for more information). After graduating from Hollywood High School in 1951, Burnett won a scholarship to UCLA, where she initially planned on studying journalism. During her first year of college, Burnett switched her focus to theater arts and English, with the goal of becoming a playwright. She found she had to take an acting course to enter the playwright program; "I wasn't really ready to do the acting thing, but I had no choice."[5] She followed a sudden impulse in her first performance; "Don't ask me why, but when we were in front of the audience, I suddenly decided I was going to stretch out all my words and my first line came out 'I'm baaaaaaaack!'" The audience response moved her deeply: They laughed and it felt great. All of a sudden, after so much coldness and emptiness in my life, I knew the sensation of all that warmth wrapping around me. I had always been a quiet, shy, sad sort of girl and then everything changed for me. You spend the rest of your life hoping you'll hear a laugh that great again. During this time, Burnett performed in several university productions, garnering recognition for her comedic and musical abilities. Her mother disapproved of her acting ambitions: She wanted me to be a writer. She said you can always write, no matter what you look like. When I was growing up she told me to be a little lady, and a couple of times I got a whack for crossing my eyes or making funny faces. Of course, she never, I never, dreamed I would ever perform. The young Burnett, always insecure about her looks, described her reaction to her mother's advice of "You can always write, no matter what you look like", in her 1986 memoir One More Time: "God, that hurt!"In 1954, during her junior year, a professor invited Burnett and some other students to perform at a black-tie party. A man and his wife approached her afterward, as she was putting cookies in her purse to take home to her grandmother. Instead of reprimanding her, the man complimented Burnett's performance and asked about her future plans. When he discovered that she wanted to go try her luck with musical comedy in New York, but did not have enough money, he offered her and her boyfriend Don Saroyan each a $1000 interest-free loan on the spot. The conditions were that it was to be paid back in five years, his name was never to be revealed, and if she became a success, she would help others attain their dreams. Burnett took him up on his offer. She and Saroyan left college and moved to New York to pursue acting careers. That same year, Burnett's father died of causes related to his alcoholism. After spending her first year in New York working as a hat-check girl and failing to land acting jobs, Burnett along with other girls living at The Rehearsal Club, a boarding house for women seriously pursuing an acting career, put on The Rehearsal Club Revue on March 3, 1955. They mailed invitations to agents, who showed up along with stars like Celeste Holm and Marlene Dietrich, and this opened doors for several of the girls. Burnett was cast in a minor role on The Paul Winchell and Jerry Mahoney Show in 1955. She played the girlfriend of a ventriloquist’s dummy on the popular children’s program. This role led to her starring role opposite Buddy Hackett in the short-lived sitcom Stanley from 1956 to 1957.After Stanley, Burnett found herself unemployed for a short time. She eventually bounced back a few months later as a highly popular performer on the New York circuit of cabarets and night clubs, most notably for a hit parody number called "I Made a Fool of Myself Over John Foster Dulles" (Dulles was Secretary of State at the time). In 1957, Burnett performed this number on both The Tonight Show, hosted by Jack Paar, and The Ed Sullivan Show. Burnett also worked as a regular on one of television's earliest game shows, Pantomime Quiz, during this time. In 1957, just as Burnett was achieving her first small successes, her mother died.Burnett and Larry Blyden from The Garry Moore Show, 1960.Burnett's first true taste of success came with her appearance on Broadway in the 1959 musical Once Upon a Mattress. The same year, she became a regular player on The Garry Moore Show, a job that lasted until 1962. She won an Emmy that year for her "Outstanding Performance in a Variety or Musical Program or Series" on the show. Burnett portrayed a number of characters, most memorably the put-upon cleaning woman who would later become her signature alter-ego. With her success on the Moore show, Burnett finally rose to headliner status and appeared in the 1962 special Julie and Carol at Carnegie Hall, co-starring her friend Julie Andrews. The show was produced by Bob Banner, directed by Joe Hamilton, and written by Mike Nichols and Ken Welch. Julie and Carol at Carnegie Hall won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Program Achievement in the Field of Music. Burnett also guest-starred on a number of shows during this time, including The Twilight Zone episode "Cavender is Coming" and a recurring role as a tough female Marine in Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.. Burnett became good friends with the latter show's star, Jim Nabors, who would later be her first guest every season on her variety show. In 1963, Lucille Ball became a friend and mentor to Burnett, and after having the younger performer guest star on The Lucy Show a number of times, Ball reportedly offered Burnett her own sitcom called "Here's Agnes", to be produced by Desilu Productions. Burnett declined the offer, however, deciding instead to put together a variety show. The two remained close friends until Ball's death in 1989. Ball sent flowers every year on her birthday. When Burnett awoke on the day of her 56th birthday in 1989, she discovered via the morning news that Ball had died. Later that afternoon, flowers arrived at Burnett's house with the note "Happy Birthday, Kid. Love, Lucy." In 1964, Burnett was cast opposite Caterina Valente and Bob Newhart on the variety show The Entertainers which ran for only one season. She also starred in the Broadway musical Fade Out - Fade In, but was forced to quit after sustaining a neck injury in a taxi accident. The show’s producers sued the actress for breach of contract, but the suit was later dropped. There is so much more, but this is plenty for a blog post. I have always found Carol Bu |
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