Women's History

Yesterday we attended a terrific program at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art. It opened with a screening of the documentary by Kay Sloan, "Suffragettes in the Silent Cinema," with extremely rare footage of anti- and pro- suffrage silent films. Then Coline Jenkins, the great, great granddaughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, spoke. She's standing in the first picture holding a replica of a street sign that is near City Hall in New York City. Melissa Messina, curator of the excellent exhibit "Votes for Women" at the museum is seated in the corner of the picture. Coline set up the other picture for me to take. It features Rachel Milano, a fashion designer for Donna Karan, communing with a bust of Susan B. Anthony. Rachel styled her hair for the program in the fashion of some young suffragists. Our conversations with young, middle-age, and beyond middle-age feminists before, during, and after the program were lively, stimulating and fun. Coline, Linda and I extended the fun by "hanging out" together, including a just-before-closing-time trip to the Rose Garden in the next door Brooklyn Botanical Garden.

It was early evening when Linda and I headed back to retrieve the car that we had parked on the upper West Side (We thought it would be easier to take the subway to Brooklyn, but it wasn't because of the weekend construction on the subway. Oh, well.) Along the way, we stopped to eat and check out the craft fair at Lincoln Center where we ended up buying early birthday presents for each other--a handcrafted handbag for her & a handcrafted backpack with a super convenient side zipper into the main pouch for me.

Our Road Trip: Thanksgiving and Women's History

We're back from our 10-day research road trip that included several days in Minneapolis, MN where we attended the 14th Berkshire Conference on the History of Women.

Before a road trip, I highlight all the women's history sites on our maps. (I use a variety of sources to identify the sites.) What we visit depends on many things--our timing, relevance (since I'm currently writing about suffrage those sites were #1), distance, etc. The first day we zigzagged off Route 80 to Salem, Ohio, site of the first Women's Rights Convention in Ohio, held on April 19 and 20, 1850. On the way, we serendipitously discovered another Thanksgiving claim on a sign in front of a shop in Berlin Center, Ohio. The shop was closed, but I found Joseph Donnelly, the proprietor, artist, and claim-maker working in his garden. The illustration on the sign are a Missaugua Native and Garrett Packard, the first white settler in what was Connecticut's "Western Reserve," now northeast Ohio, cooking a turkey. According to Joseph, "Garrett Packard was said to have shot a turkey at the central creek, now called "Turkey Broth" Creek. Because "peaceful relations" had been established between the Packard family and local natives Joseph felt he could imagine the scene and make the claim. Tragically, the "peaceful relations" did not last, and Joseph is an eloquent storyteller of that history. After lingering for an hour or more, we resumed our drive, but only for a short time because there on a large road sign beside a cemetery I spied--after almost twenty years of photographing women's history sites--the first explicitely grandmother women's history site!

Reader Response Thanksgiving: The True Story

Today I checked my email from a motel in Michigan City, IN--we're on a ten-day research road trip--and found a response from Jan Kristo, professor, Reading and Language Arts, the University of Maine, who just received the extraordinary honor of being named the Distinguished Maine Professor! She is the author of important books about using nonfiction in classrooms. Jan and I and Sandip Wilson co-authored a chapter,"Bold New Perspectives in Selecting and Using Nonfiction" in Shattering the Looking Class:Challenge, Risk & Controversy in Children's Literature edited by Susan Lehr (Christopher-Gordon, 2008). On page 111, of Thanksgiving, I quoted Jan's descriptions of the foods tied to her cultural identity--"Lithuanian (Full Blood)"-- that were included in her family's Thanksgiving menu: "headcheese . . . horseradish and herring and 'potato fudge' and ausakes."

Here is Jan Kristo's response after reading Thanksgiving: The True Story:
Thanks for the galley of Thanksgiving. I've started it and can't put it down. I love the writing and feel your voice come through the pages. . . .Your book is going to be required reading for my students and has all the makings of being a landmark text!!!

My brother and Thanksgiving: The True Story

Recently my brother Kip and his family--Lisa, Julia and Ford--spent a few days with us. I showed them the galley of Thanksgiving: The True Story and where I quoted Lisa about Thanksgiving Day football games. (p. 100) Later in their visit, Kip walked by me and simply said "St. Augustine."
"Huh," I replied.
"St. Augustine" he said and walked away.
What is he talking about? I wondered.
Suddenly I got it.
"Kip," I called after him. "Did you just read chapter 1 in Thanksgiving?"
(St. Augustine, Florida is one of the 12 competing claims for the location of "first" Thanksgiving that I write about in chapter 1.)
"St. Augustine," he said.

My sister and Alaska

My sister Cam and I are years apart in age (she was born the year I graduated from high school) but we're soul mates. (For those of you with a copy of my book Girls: A History of Growing Up Female in America, there's a picture of Cam on p. 71 and on the back cover.) She and her husband have been driving and camping from their home in Hemet, CA, to Alaska since early May. Cam's been keeping us updated with vivid emails and spectacular pictures. At this point, they are on the return trip. Here's an excerpt from yesterday's email: From Jasper we continued south through Lake Louise and Banff. This highway is called the Icefields Parkway and is described as one of North America's most scenic drives. Photos of this majestic area do not come close to describing the beauty. Huge snow-capped mountains, rivers running bank to bank, crystal clear lakes varying from gray to blue to green, thick forests of tall pine trees, abundant wildlife and more waterfalls than we could count. A number of glacier fingers connected to the Columbia Icefields were visible from time to time. . . .Tonight we are in Lethbridge, Alberta, about 63 miles from the border. Tomorrow we will cross into the U.S. and head for Glacier National Park. Wildlife has been abundant. So far, 15 bears, one wolf, one pheasant, lost count of the many moose, elk, caribou and deer. Eagles, hawks, geese, swans, ducks, loons and ptarmigan.