Mon dieu! J'ai des amis?

Day 15: Tabitha Babbitt
Today's entry is short, but no less important. Many of you (including yours truly) has used power tools or saws at some point in your lives. Have you ever thought of where they came from or who invented them? Since this is during Women's History Month, I have no doubt that you assume I'm talking about a woman and you would be correct. The tool in question is the circular saw.

The inventor of the circular saw was one Tabitha Babbitt, a Shaker. Let me pad this entry with information on the Shakers, since not many people know about them and other than some hymns, furniture and derivative work, not much of them exists today. Actually, there is a Shaker community in Maine, but as of December '09, it contains only three people.

Shakers were similar to the Quakers in that they believed that anyone could find God inside of them rather than through a priest. However, whereas Quakers still exist and are producing families, the Shakers are not. They try not to sin at all and they consider sex a huge sin. So, the only way to become a Shaker is to convert and join them. Before the 1960s, they used to adopt orphans into their movement, but that stopped when the laws changed.

Back to Tabitha. She lived in Harvard Massachusetts in the late eighteenth century. It can be assumed that her life was quiet and, other than her inventions, uneventful. As you can imagine, saws were hand powered and it took a lot of effort to saw through anything. One day, she sat at her spinning wheel while she watched her brothers cutting wood. She realized that they only cut on the forward stroke, wasting twice as much energy. So, she collected a hefty piece of tin and cut teeth into it. Then, she rigged the first circular saw blade up to her own spinning wheel and voila! the circular saw was born.

She also improved the way nails were produced: cut instead of forged and created an improved spinning wheel head amongst other inventions. Because of her beliefs, she never sought a patent for any of her inventions. So, remember Tabitha Babbitt the next you or someone you know spends time being manly at the circular saw: quiet and contemplative.

Sources:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-adv/specialsales/homefashion/post77.html

http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bltools.htm

http://www.moah.org/exhibits/archives/tools/exhibit_guide_tools.html

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

Mike is all a twitter

00:32 Home and sleep. Thanks 2 Chris for the adventure, but mostly Lauri for allowing me 2 spend the extra day down south. #

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So Very New, All Over Again

I haven't written because I've been waning.

And you'd better believe, when I'm waning, I'm whining, if I'm writing at all. And thus, I thought I'd spare myself the sight of myself being so sloppy and dire. I'm in partial recovery now, but I warn you, I'm not symptom-free.

After all these years, you might wonder why I haven't found some way to avoid the seasons of mope. Similarly, you might wonder why, after all these years, humans haven't found some way to make it constantly daylight all over Earth.

Well, it's because shit doesn't work that way. Shit is a force of nature. The moon slips into shadow, and lunacy dims. Then, there comes a period of sanity - dismal, doubtful, shining, stark sanity - a cold, porcelain sanity – a sanity that, it never fails, I fear may never break.

Yes, each time, I wonder if I'll write again. And yes, similarly, each night, I wonder if the sun will rise again. So, okay, fine. Clearly, everybody's got some flaws in their understanding of the solar system. But, according to a thing I heard this one time, the skies are like clockwork; they keep doing the same things, over and over, for better or worse, and my creative cycle is basically like that.

When the moon is in shadow, it's easy to see things like a sane person would.

It's easy to see that my arbitrary deadlines are arbitrary.

It's easy to see that I have no real audience waiting for my writing.

It's easy to see that this whole expedition is a tactical disaster, that it's time to cut my losses and save what little is salvageable.

It's easy to see that this writing-and-movies bullshit snake-oil-show has been an embarrassing waste of the only lifetime I'm likely to receive.

It's easy to go out to dinner, it's easy to sit in bed and read, it's easy to watch a movie on streaming, it's easy to drive somewhere I've never been, it's easy to play a game on my phone, it's easy to enjoy TV on DVD, to walk the dog, to clean the kitchen.

When the moon is in shadow, it's hard to find the urgency I felt when I was an idiot child.

It's hard to imagine myself like I once imagined I would become, as the head of a production team, as the master of a creative machine, as an award-winner, as a trend setter, as someone to study and admire.

It's hard to dream stupid dreams and be unashamed of them.

It's hard to keep doing what I've done a thousand, thousand, thousand times before, and still continue expecting different results.

When the moon is in shadow, it's hard to be crazy enough to do all this.

I suspect that everyone who struggles to prove themselves needs a healthy dose of lunacy.

How can a comedian, or a musician, or an actor, how can anyone, face a half-empty, disinterested house, and still perform?

They need madness.

How can a writer lay awake in bed, or sit alone at the keyboard, struggling to find a better idea, struggling to find a better phrase, struggling to make a better scene, when no one will read it or see it performed?

The only answer readily available - is madness.

I suspect that everyone who struggles to prove themselves wishes, in some small corner of their heart, that they were mad. If they were mad, they too could believe six impossible things before breakfast, even when the moon is tediously failing to be as full as it should.

And now I'm thinking -

Isn't it interesting, when the moon is called new, it's so very new - that it's not there at all?

Day 14: Maria Gaetana Agnesi
Happy Pi Day! In celebration of the infinite number, I chose Maria Gaetana Agnesi of Italy. Maria was well-versed in linguistics, math and philosophy. She wrote the first book that discussed differential and integral calculus. Not only that, but she was a(n honorary) member of faculty at the University of Bologna.

Her father wanted nothing more for his family than to have them become Milanese nobility. Simple, right? It worked toward Maria's favor, who was recognized as being very special. By age five, she spoke French as well as her native Italian and by the time she turned eleven, she had added German, Greek, Hebrew, Latin and Spanish. When she was nine, she gave an hour-long speech (in Latin, the language of academics) on a woman's right to be educated. Four years later, she found herself speaking with influential men and friends of her father's on philosophy.

This may seem like the beginning of an amazing life, but Maria didn't want this. She wanted nothing more than to retire to a convent and live the rest of her life in peaceful solitude. Her father refused to let her turn to a convent, but he did allow her to live a semi-reclusive
life. This was not purely selfish as her father married twice more after the death of Maria's mother so that she found herself the oldest of twenty-one siblings. She was needed to teach them.

She published several books in her lifetime. One was called Propositiones Philosophicae. It included intellectual discussions and essays on science and philosophy. Analytical Institutions is considered her most important and was originally written as a textbook for her brothers. It is in this book that she discusses differential and integral calculus and makes it possible to analyze calculus in a clear way. She is immortalized in math, in the witch of Agnesi, a mistranslation of versiera. Unfortunately, I don't have any sort of mathematical education to explain all the concepts she studied and wrote about, so I can't even begin to explain them to you.

Her father fell ill in 1750 and Pope Benedict XIV appointed her to the chair of math and natural philosophy at the University of Bologna to replace her father, the first woman to be appointed at a university. Two years later, her father died and she was finally able to devote herself to theology. She helped the poor and infirm and sick. She held a position at the Hospice Trivulzio for Blue Nuns in her home of Milan until, finally, she took the habit of a sisterhood until the day she died. Not only is the witch of Agnesi named for her, but a crater on Venus has also been named in her honor.

Sources:

http://www.agnesscott.edu/Lriddle/WOMEN/agnesi.htm

http://www.gap-system.org/~history/Biographies/Agnesi.html

http://www.astr.ua.edu/4000WS/AGNESI.html

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

Day 13: Anna Comnena
Anna Comnena was a princess and an historian. She was the daughter of Emporer Alexius Comnenus of the Byzantine Empire, which stretched from Italy to Armenia. She began her education at a very young age and her parents made sure that she received an excellent one. She expected to inherit the throne, but the birth of her brother, John Comnenus, brought that expectation to an end. Still, she continued her education.

At the end of the eleventh century, she married an historian by the name of Nicephorus Bryennius at the age of fourteen. Not much later, her father was stricken with an illness that claimed his life. Before his death, Anna and her mother pleaded with him to restore Anna to the throne to no avail.

After John inherited the throne, Anna's mother, Irene, convinced Anna to kill the emporer. The attempt failed. Their lives were spared and Irene was forced into a convent and Anna retired from court life. After her husband died, when she was around fifty-five, she too turned to a connvent. It was there that Anna began the Alexiad, a fifteen volume history.

She had obvious contempt for the Crusaders of the West. More often than not, she saw them looting Byzantium and ignoring Alexius instead of defending Constantinople against the Muslims. The Alexiad also praises women and their accomplishments in a time when women were expected to be confined to their own quarters, a gyneceum. They had to cover their faces and were not allowed in processions. Her grandmother, Anna Dalassena, was accomplished in her own right and Anna Comnena wrote that she was given leeway to write what she thought and have her own opinion.

Sources:

http://www.britannica.com/women/article-9007669

http://www.hyperhistory.net/apwh/bios/b2comnenaanna.htm

http://www.womeninworldhistory.com/heroine5.html

Mike is all a twitter

08:07 Document editing at 80 mph done. Obay yo yo. Here I cone. #

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Day 12: Yaa Asantewaa
The history books are full of queens. Sometimes, they even get to do something. Today, I went looking for a queen not well known in white, western culture. I found Yaa Asantewaa of Ejisu, a district of the Asanti (Ashanti) Confederacy in what would later become Ghana. All you may know of Ghana is that it's a country in Africa. You may even know that it used to be called the Gold Coast by the British and the Ivory Coast by the French. It has a rich history dating back to the early Stone Age, somewhere around 4,000 BCE.

Yaa Asantewaa was the Queen Mother born sometime around 1840. Her brother reigned for several years and after he died, she used her influence to get her own grandson to reign. He was exiled by the British, along with the current king of Asante. In his place, the British sent a govenor-general, who then demanded the Golden Stool. The Golden Stool is the symbol of the Asante nation and their independence and it was an incredible insult to the entire people. This led to a secret meeting between the remaining government and Yaa Asantewaa urged her countrymen to war with the British.

It wasn't until an incident between the British and the Asante that Yaa Asantewaa could amass an army large enough to actually fight against the British. An officer was sent to find the Golden Stool. He happened upon a village filled only with children. They said that the adults went out hunting, so he had them bound and beaten. When the adults came out to defend the children, he had them bound and beaten as well.

It was brutal and it spurred the Asante into action. Yaa Asantewaa led her people in the War for Independence in 1900. For three months, she and her countrymen laid seige at a fort in Kumasi, where most of the British took refuge. In order to stop them, the British crown had to send 1,500 troops. Yaa Asantewaa was captured, along with fifteen of her closest advisors, and sent into exile to the Seychelles. This was the same island nation that her son had been sent to.

Unfortunately, in 1902, the British made Asante one of their protectorates, despite the people's brave efforts. Yaa Asantewaa died in exile in 1921. In 1924, the exiled king and those remaining in exile were allowed to return home. Yaa Asantewaa and the others that died in exile were returned home to be buried in their native soil.

This story has a happy ending, though. Thirty years later, the Asante gained their independence and became the Republic of Ghana. This was the first nation of Africa to do so.

Sources:

http://www.distinguishedwomen.com/bio.php?womanid=81

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

Day 11: Asclepigenia
I completely forgot to post yesterday. I had one of those weather headaches that don't really go away, so I spent most of my day off in the bedroom with a heating pad pressed to my head. So today will be a twofer.

I'm sure many of you are familiar with Greek philosophers such as Aristotle or Pythagoras or Anaxagoras. Today's woman is a philosopher from fourth century AD Greece. If you know anything about Greek society, then you know just how remarkable that is.

Asclepigenia, however, was a remarkable woman. Like many early Greeks, not much is known about her. Not much was written down and of what was written down, much was lost or destroyed. What we do know is that her father was Plutarch of Athens, a Neoplatonist according to today's times but simply a Platonist during his. Basically, the Platonists followed Plato's school of philosophy, which was modeled on Socrates' teachings.

Plutarch was the head of the Neoplatonist school in Athens. Asclepigenia, along with her brother, Hierius, learned from her father. It was very rare for a woman to learn philosophy at all. Not only did he teach her that, but he also passed along his knowledge of Chaldean mysticism and theurgy. Chaldean is another word for Mesopotamia, which includes Sumerian, Akkadian, Assyrian and Babylonian. Basically, the fertile crescent. Theurgy is miracle-working. Plutarch learned these secrets from his father and presumably on back in a patrilineal form as was customary. For whatever reason, he decided not to teach his son these secrets as well, making Asclepigenia his physical, philosophical and theological heir.

After her father died, Asclepigenia continued teaching. I'm not sure if she ran the school at all, but she did direct the teaching and flow of knowledge. However, one of her students, Proclus, eventually became head of the school and (though he didn't know it at the time) one of the last Neoplatonists. She not only instructed him on Neoplatonist philosophy, but she passed on the Chaldean mysticism and theurgy.

Sources:

http://www.britannica.com/women/article-9009792

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

Google Books

Mike is all a twitter

20:44 I miss my family. #

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Day 10: Deborah Sampson
One thing history books seem to gloss over is the role of women in war, especially the American Revolution and the Civil War. There might get a footnote about Molly Pitcher or a paragraph about Clara Barton, but for the most part, they're ignored completely.

Deborah Sampson is one woman that the history books don't mention and unless you're from Massachusetts, you've probably never heard of her. Born in 1760, she witnessed the birth of my nation. She was the oldest in a very poor family. Her father ran off to be a sailor and her mother was chronically ill. Deborah herself became an indentured servant, working in her master's home and field in the summer and attending school in the winter. After her term of employment ended, she supported herself by teaching.

In 1778, she wanted to do something for the war effort. So, she disguised herself as a man. She was tall for a woman, five foot seven inches, and because of her field work, had a similar physique as a man so all she had to do was bind her breasts. However, when she signed the Articles of Enlistment, someone recognized that she held her pen in a peculiar way and she didn't show up for duty the next day. She tried again in 1782 and was sent to the Light Infantry Company of the 4th Massachusetts Regiment. She was teased because she never shaved, but the men in her company assumed that she was simply too young.

She was injured during her first battle, mere months after her enlistment. Two musket balls punctured her thigh and her forehead received a nasty cut. She was taken to a hospital above her protests, but fled before the doctors could discover her secret. And then, because she hadn't earned her Medal of Badassery yet, she removed the balls herself with a penknife and sewing needle. While the leg never fully recovered, she refused to leave the army.

A peace treaty was signed, but Deborah's time in the army wasn't up yet. There was an officer rebellion and she was amongst the soldiers sent to quell it. This time, she came down with a nasty fever and ended up in a hospital again. Her secret was discovered, but she was being treated by a wonderful doctor. He discreetly sent her to his home where his wife and daughters nursed her back to health.

Not long after she returned to the army again, the Treaty of Paris was signed and the soldiers were sent home. The doctor who treated her sent her with a message to General Patterson, who, to his credit, never let her secret out. She was honorably discharged and given a small sum of money. She married a Massachusetts famer two years later and had three children and adopted a fourth.

In 1792, she petitioned the state of Massachusetts for her back pay, withheld because she was a woman. Her petition actually made it through the Senate and not only did she earn her 34 pounds, but the court said that she exhibited exemplary behavior. She, however, never received a pension and had to borrow money from family and her friend Paul Revere to make ends meet, despite her numerous speaking engagements. Finally, in 1809, Congress finally awarded her the pension she so richly deserved. She died in 1827 at the age of 66.

Sources:

http://www.distinguishedwomen.com/biographies/sampson.html

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~nwa/sampson.html

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

Day 9: Sayyida Salme/Emily Ruete
Today's focus has two names: her birth name of Sayyida Salme and the name of Emily Ruete, which she took upon her conversion to Christianity. Sayyida's story sounds like something out of a fairy tale. She was born a princess of Zanzibar and Oman in 1844. Her father was the sultan and her mother a concubine. She spent much of her time in the Bet il Mtoni palace about five miles north of Stone Town where she learned Arabic and Swahili.

When she was seven, she moved to the house of her brother, Majid bin Said, who would later become the sultan. He taught her riding and shooting. Two years later, she moved to another estate where she taught herself writing, a useful skill and one most women did not learn. Her father died when she was twelve and she received her inheritance from him. It consisted of a plantation and 5500 pounds. Just three years later, her mother died and from her, Sayyida inherited three more plantations.

She moved back to Stone Town and eventually met a German by the name of Rudolph Ruete. In 1866, she left the country with him, probably because she was pregnant with their son. They named him Heinrich, but he died four months later. After that, she converted to Christianity and married Rudolph. They settled in Hamburg and had two daughters and another son.

When Rudolph died in 1870 in a traffic accident, Sayyida, now Emily, had no income and had her heritage denied her. To make ends meet, she wrote Memoirs of an Arabian Princess from Zanzibar. It was first published in Germany, but later in the US, UK and Ireland. It's the first known autobiography of an Arabian woman.

She became caught up in Otto von Bismarck's colonialization plans for Zanzibar, quite possibly because he wanted to put her son on the throne. She revisited Zanzibar in 1885. From 1889 to 1914, she lived in Beirut, Lebanon and Jaffa. She died in Jena, Germany in 1924 during a bout with pneumonia. In 1992, An Arabian Princess Between Two Worlds was published, making public her letters from home and her reaction to Europe.

Sources:

http://www.statemaster.com/encyclopedia/Emily-Ruete

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

Day 8: Amina
In the sixteenth century, there was a province called Zazzu, which is now called Zaria which is in what is now Nigeria. She was born into the royal family, though records are conflicting over whether or not she actually became queen. Her reign may have started in 1536, when she was three, or in 1576, after her brother died.

The region was matrilineal, so it wasn't unusual for women to inherit land or even rule, as her mother did before her. Bakwa's reign was peaceful, but Amina chose to learn martial arts with the soldiers.

Around the time her brother became the ruler in 1566, Amina was well-known for her prowess with weaponry and as the leading cavalry soldier. She led her first military campaign three months after her brother died and she became the ruler (as either a princess or a queen). During her reign of around thirty-four years, she expanded her people's territory. She is credited with creating and popularizing earth walls around the city.

Sources:

http://www.distinguishedwomen.com/biographies/zazzua.html

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

Mike is all a twitter

18:51 Grey clouds loomed and the first drops begin to fall as I approach PDX about to fly away from my happy family for a week of work. #

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Day 7: Anna Atkins
You may have heard of the Children's python, named for John Children, the father of today's focus, Anna Atkins (nee Children). Anna's mother died shortly after she was born in 1799 and as a result became close to her biologist father. Because of that, she was well-educated, particularly in the field of science, which I don't think I need to tell you how rare that was. She actually published work before she became known in the photography world. Her engravings of shells were used to illustrate Green Shells, a book translated by her father.

Her training was actually in botany. After she married John Atkins in 1825, she continued her education by collecting and drying the various plants around their home. Anna didn't just learn about photography from anyone. She learned about it from it's creator, William Talbot. She focused mainly on photogenic drawing, which is placing an object on light-sensitized paper to produce an image after exposing it to the sun.

Rather than only collecting specimens, she also photographed them using this technique. Many of them were published in British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions in 1843. This may not seem like much, but before Anna, photographs weren't used to illustrate books. She proved that you could in face use it to accurate show the specimens.

Sources:

http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artMakerDetails?maker=1542

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

Current Mood: giggly

Day 6 The Trung Sisters
Today's woman of the day is actually women of the day. The Trung sisters grew up in first century CE. The problem with researching people from so long ago is that legend gets confused with fact. One thing's for certain, these two women were awesome. I mean really awesome.

See, Trung Trac and Trung Nhi were daughts of a Vietnamese lord under China's rule. For those of you keeping track, it was during the Han Dynasty. At this time, Vietnam was matrilineal. It was a sharp contrast to China's Confucious followings which said that man must submit to emporer, son submit to father and woman submit to man. Not only did the Trung sisters not submit to their father, but they were trained in martial arts, a benefit of growing up in a military family.

Trac, the elder sister, married another lord, Thi Sach. He was killed when he took a stand against China's rule and Trac was raped. The two sisters decided to take up arms against China. They knew that they couldn't do it alone, so they raised an army. By army, I mean a force of around 80,000 people, made up mostly of women, including the sisters' mother. According to legend, one woman, a noblewoman and close friend of the sisters by the name of Phung Thi Chinh, even fought while pregnant. She gave birth on the battlefield, slung her baby onto her back and continued fighting.

They drove the Chinese back in months and took back sixty-five strongholds. Trac was named their ruler and the people changed her name to Trung Vuong, "She-king Trung." They continued fighting China for two or three years until they were finally overwhelmed. Rather than be taken prisoner, the sisters committed suicide. Some women continued to fight to the death while others committed suicide as well, including Phung Thi Chinh and her baby.

Sources:

http://www.womeninworldhistory.com/heroine10.html

http://www.distinguishedwomen.com/biographies/trung.html

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

Mike is all a twitter

17:45 Found 3 geocaches with the boy this afternoon. Much fun was had. #

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Day 5: Rebecca Lee Crumpler
Today's focus is Rebecca Lee Crumpler. Dr. Crumpler became the first Black woman to earn her MD, a year before Rebecca Cole. Born in Deleware in 1831, she lived there for twenty years when she moved to Charlestown, MA. There she worked as a nurse for eight years. Not only was she the first Black woman in the US to earn her MD, she was the only Black woman to graduate from the New England Female Medical College because it closed in 1873.

She moved to Richmond, VA after the Civil War. She felt that the city was an appropriate place to study the diseases of women and children. There, she joined other Black physicians treating recently freed slaves. They worked with the Freedman's Bureau that included charity and missionary groups, despite the racism she and other Black physicians faced.

By the time 1880 rolled around, she moved to Hyde Park, MA and no longer actively practiced medicine. She published a book in 1883 called Book of Medical Discourses. Much of it was based on notes and journal entries she took during her years of practicing medicine. The book focused on advising women caring for their families. The book is just as remarkable as her career; it was published during a time when it was very difficult for Black writers to publish and it was one of the first Black medical publications in the country.

Dr. Crumpler died in 1895 in Fairview, MA. Not much is known about her, save what she wrote in her book. in 1989, the Rebecca Lee Society was created by two physicians, Saundra Maass-Robinson and Patricia Whitley, to promote Black women in physicians.

Sources:

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/changingthefaceofmedicine/physicians/biography_73.html

http://www.blackpast.org/?q=aah/crumpler-rebecca-davis-lee-1831-1895

Day 4: Maria Mitchell
I'm sure many, if not most of you, are aware of Galileo, Brahe, Cassini and Copernicus. How many of you have heard of Maria Mitchell? If you haven't, that's okay. She is today's focus.

Maria Mitchell, born in 1818 in Nantucket, MA, is considered America's first woman astronomer. She was the third child of ten and although she did attend school, she was mostly self-taught. By sixteen, she was a teacher's assistant to Cyrus Peirce, the founder of the first normal school in the US (a teacher's college today). Leaving that, she soon took a job at Nantucket's Atheneum Library.

Her father had an observatory built on the roof of their home around the same time. It was from there that he observed the stars for the US Coast Guard with Maria helping with the measurements. From that and from using the observatory herself, she learned the night sky exceptionally well.

In 1847, something amazing happened. Maria observed a star where no star should be. It was a comet, completely undiscovered and invisible to the naked eye. It was named Ms. Mitchell's Comet. Maria kept her position at the library, but soon began receiving letters of congratulations and visits from people curious to see the first woman astronomer. Two years later, she took a job at the US Nautical Almanac Office, computing the positions of Venus throughout the years. Also unusual for the time, she began traveling to scientific meetings. Her sex did bar her from the Vatican Observatory, though she asked for and received special permission to enter. Only, it was during the day and was unable to actually look through the telescopes at night.

In 1865, she was appointed professor of astronomy and the director of the observatory at Vassar College, which had just opened. She worked with the third largest telescope in the US and focused quite a bit on the surfaces of Jupiter and Saturn. Just four years later saw her as the first woman elected to the American Philisophical Society. Four years after that, she was one of the founders of the American Association for the Advancement of Women. In that same year, she attended the first Women's Congress, rubbing elbows with giants such as Lucy Stone, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and led the Women's Congress in 1875.

She did in 1889, a year after she retired from Vassar. Throughout her entire life, she encouraged girls and women to follow their dreams and be anything they wanted to be as her father had encouraged her.

Sources:

http://space.about.com/cs/astronomerbios/a/mariamitchell_2.htm

http://www.distinguishedwomen.com/biographies/mitchell.html

http://www.mmo.org/maria-mitchell.html

My personal letter to the Santa Monica-Malibu School Board
From:

rydot <ry@mywork.place>
Date: March 2, 2010
To: SMMUSD Board <brd@smmusd.org>
Subject: Preserving the elementary school music program

Members of the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District Board of Education:

I write to express my deepest concerns regarding the board's proposal to discontinue the entire elementary school music program as part of your attempts to bridge the current budget gap. As a former student who got his musical start on trumpet at Franklin Elementary school, and went on to first-chair positions at Lincoln Middle School and Santa Monica High School, I feel I am in a position to object to this strategy from an informed position.

Pride in the accomplishments of the Santa Monica-Malibu music program runs deep in the community. While most public schools strive for recognition in regional or statewide circles, Santa Monica's bands and orchestras break the "public school" mold as they continue to grace the world's stages. During my senior year at Santa Monica High School, I was privileged enough to perform in Valencia, Spain during the Symphony Orchestra's participation in the International Festival of Youth Orchestras. We were the ONLY non-conservatory "high school" in attendance; that we were from an American "public school" was even more extraordinary! While such an achievement could, in one's wildest dreams, be considered as a one-time talent "blip" for most school districts, a simple glance over the district's own press clippings reveals the 100-year history of excellence that is the Santa Monica music program.

Such talent does not simply manifest itself at the high school level. If there is any "magic" involved, it is that Santa Monica has maintained a robust and functioning music education program at the elementary school level. When I discussed this notion with my coworkers, I recoiled at their horror stories of spending "alternate thursdays" blowing desperately on recorders or learning scales from "the lady who played the autoharp" after lunch. We were so lucky at Franklin to have the opportunity to explore the classical instruments and to learn how to play them-- and, more importantly (although, at times, perhaps begrudgingly), how to practice!

I have a strong belief, however, that it isn't merely luck that enables music to flourish in the primary schools. It comes from the understanding that, by injecting newly-minted 6th graders with two years of trumpet or violin (or remarkably enough for my class, oboe!) into the middle school band and orchestra programs, musical AND academic potential rises with the level of talent. The newer players benefit from the experienced ones, and the whole program benefits from below.

The choice of the people of Santa Monica, made again and again by their elected representatives on the school board through all manner of budgetary crises, has been to continue the existence of this all-too essential first step toward a lifetime of positive achievement through music. To cut the roots off the tree that gives this gift would be devastating to future students and to the community.

rydot
Sound Engineer, at the place where I work
Santa Monica High School Class of 1995

Read also: Take action to save the SMMUSD Elementary Music Program!

Today's woman is Octavia Butler, one of my favorite authors. She was born in Pasadena, California in 1947 and was raised by her grandmother and mother. She may have grown up in a Baptist household, but she was drawn to such publications as Amazing and Fantasy and Science Fiction. Though she was diagnosed with dyslexia, she wrote to alleviate boredom and loneliness. She received an Associates from Pasadena City College and later took writing classes through a UCLA extension.

Ms. Butler is known for her science fiction. Several themes run through most of her work, including racism, community and sexuality. While her most famous book is perhaps Kindred, it wasn't her first. She began the Patternist series in 1974 with Patternmaster, the fifth book in the series. Four of the five books were later published in an omnibus with Survivor left out. She hated that book and regretted writing it.

Kindred and Fledgling are her only stand-alone novels. On a personal note, the latter is one of my favorite books. Read it. You know you want to. Besides the Patternist series, she wrote Lilith's Brood, which used to be the Xenogenesis trilogy.

There is also the Parable series, which has two books and takes place in a dystopian future. There is a collection of short stories called Bloodchild and Other Stories.

Sadly, Ms. Butler died in 2006 after a fall outside her home in Lake Forest Park, Washington. She may be gone, but she lives on in her words.

Sources:

http://www.sfwa.org/members/butler

http://octaviabutler.net/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octavia_E._Butler

I get the feeling
I feel, often, that I sacrifice my comfort in order to make my friends happy. I go along with things that bother me- hoping that I'll just get over them. Usually I do. I wait until whatever emotion I have involving a situation dissipates and then I (usually, by default) evaluate.

I don't make decisions when I am feeling overcome with emotion (well, negative emotions- I make plenty of decisions while stupidly happy). This has prevented me from creating a number of unpleasant circumstances (for *everyone) but it appears that it also keeps me in these same unpleasant circumstances as well. I don't listen to people, or my emotions, when they are screaming. Rather, I wait until my emotional response seems to have faded to the point where I feel capable of "being reasonable". The net result is that the cognitive force that was so vehemently motivating me to *feel* some way or another about something is very seldom actually factored in to my decision making. The end result: that need that is present, that drive, isn't directly addressed. As I "calm down and evaluate" this turns in to "Shrug it off and ignore the issue". This invariably results in little to no change in whatever was causing the issue to begin with.

I don't know how to achieve balance with this.

I have one true, clear signal from all of this. If I wait for a situation to pass and weeks later I still feel torqued about something or upset about it- this is a signal to the conciliatory part of my brain that the situation is really and truly fucked up and I'm not being what I would consider "unreasonably upset".

I find that I have a difficult time asking for or demanding what I require. I have a high tolerance for irritants, discomfort, and non-ideal situations. In this way I feel I must be the exact opposite of

reichart (who's tolerance for irritants is unheard of- as in no one has ever heard of him tolerating an irritant). I just put up with them. It was the manner in which I was raised. Not to change my environmental or situational irritants, but to suffer and tolerate them as if that was just part of the human experience.

I think one lesson I can take from the other end of this cognitive spectrum is that I should not lightly tolerate things that bother me. I think this is something I'll work on. That and being more assertive with my wants, needs, desires, demands and manifestos.

Day 2: Suzanne Valadon
Today I'm going to focus on Suzanne Valadon. She was born Marie-Clémentine Valadon in 1865 in Bessines-sur-Gartempe, near Limoges in France, to a single laundress. She joined the circus as an acrobat at fifteen, but was only there a year before she fell and ended her career. After that, she became a model for artists, including Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. When she was eighteen, she gave birth to a son, Maurice Utrillo, a future artist.

She mingled with artists in the Montmartre quarter of Paris where she took an interest in painting. She painted portraits, landscapes, still lifes and female nudes. Her nudes caused a bit of a stir in the art world. Most nudes are romanticized or sexualized, even if it's an ordinary task. Valadon's nudes were simply women doing something normal and every day, like bathing or dressing. Her style involved bright colors as well as unconventional subject matter.

Her first exhibition exhibition was in 1915 and was considered a success. The non-artist society was shocked by her art, which defied convention. She had numerous affairs with artists and composers like Renoir and Erik Satie. She married a banker and lived with him for nearly fifteen years.

When she was almost fifty, she met another artist half her age and fell in love with him. She married him in 1914, but the marriage didn't last either. Before it ended, however, he posed for a number of her works and they had a joint exhibition.

She died in 1938 and was buried in Paris. A number of artists were at her funeral, including Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and Andre Derain.

Sources:

http://www.renoirinc.com/biography/artists/valadon.htm

http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/valadon_suzanne.html

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

Current Mood: bouncy

Take action to save the SMMUSD Elementary Music Program!
Posted and messaged to the Facebook Group "Santa Monica High School Music Department Students and Alumni"

Dear Schoolmates,

I started playing trumpet in fourth grade at Franklin Elementary and continued years beyond graduation (in fact, as recently as the small for-fun-and-tips coffee house gig I played last night). While I didn’t end up making music my career, some of you did. Others played for a little while before going on to other things.

But we all have a common background-- we’ve all endured at least one endless night of the district-wide Stairway concert! Now, all jokes aside, can you imagine what would happen if the elementary performance at that show were cut? I don’t mean cut from the evening’s program; what I mean is, can you imagine if music in the Santa Monica-Malibu elementary schools were to cease completely?

Unfortunately, this is what is on the table. Due to a widening budget gap, brought on by the massive state budget shortfalls we’ve all heard about in the news, the Santa Monica-Malibu School District is actively considering eliminating all 10 teaching positions from their elementary music program.

As music alumni, we have a responsibility to tell our story-- to explain to the school board why this is NOT the correct path to take. We, even perhaps more than our parents or the most die-hard “music lovers” in the community, know from our experiences playing in band, orchestra, or singing in choir, that a solid performance depends on a robust foundation. We must politely, but firmly, make the case to the board that they can not cut the roots off at the elementary level without sending the entire program crashing to the ground.

The board will vote on this item on March 4th, so it is urgent that we take action as swiftly as possible. Please address emails to brd@smmusd.org or use the form at http://advocate.artsforla.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=1734

Additionally, please post your letters to the group here on Facebook, so that we can strengthen our voices by echoing each other’s comments, by adding to this Discussion Topic.

Lastly, there’s one other way you can help in the coming months. The district has voted a parcel tax measure onto the ballot for a special May 25, 2010 vote-by-mail election. This measure seeks to balance the funding void left by state cutbacks and could be the last hope for the immediate continuance of programs such as primary music education. Information in support of this measure can be found at http://www.savesantamonicamalibuschools.org/

We’ve got just Tuesday and Wednesday to make our case; to respectfully make a fuss to the school board that cuts to music are unacceptable.

Thank you and keep the music playing,

rydot
Sound Engineer, at the place where I work
Santa Monica High School Class of 1995

Mike is all a twitter

21:45 I don't really watch much hockey, but THAT was a good hockey game. Even when I knew in advance who was gonna win. #

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March first is Women's History Month and as such, I had planned on posting about a spectacular woman every day this month. However, I had forgotten that February was such a short month. It's still March first where I am, so let's get this rolling, though with a regrettably short entry.

In ancient Egypt, women were equal to men. They could own property, work outside the house, own a business, become a physician, divorce, etc. Unfortunately, knowledge of women outside of rulers and rulers' wives is limited.

One woman to survive nearly five thousand years is Merit Ptah, who lived around 2700 BCE. She's notable for being the first woman named in medicine and possibly the first person named in the entire field of science. An image of her is painted on a tomb in the Valley of the Kings, which isn't something to take lightly. Only a person of great importance would have their name or image recorded on a monument. The only other bit of information I could find about her was that she had a son who was a high priest, though I'm not sure to which god. He called her the Chief Physician.

In modern times, the International Astronomical Union named an impact crater on Venus after her.

Sources:

http://egyptian-history.suite101.com/article.cfm/female_physicians_in_ancient_egypt

http://www.astr.ua.edu/4000WS/MERIT_PTAH.html

http://www.bibalex.org/wis2007/home/StaticPage.aspx?Page=5#001

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merit-Ptah

Current Mood: accomplished

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