Lets put the wife in charge of the husbands!

What this says about birth control is very, very interesting.

Found this in my email from the amazing hanvnah:

The Secretary of Labor has slashed funding for the Women’s Bureau-the only federal agency devoted solely to women’s employment issues. This cut will force the agency to reduce or eliminate vital programs that support working women, including the technical assistance Women Work! provides to our national network.

We demand that the Department of Labor restore funding to the Women’s Bureau and we need your signature to show the strength of our network and demonstrate the importance working women’s issues.

Please sign our petition to save the Women’s Bureau! You can either sign online at www.womenwork.org!

I know you guys know a lot of people who support women’s rights so please forward this email to your friends, family, colleagues and other advocates for women’s labor issues.

Go sign it! I already have.

Also, a word about the amazing hanvnah, you should go see this play she worked hard! on at Theatre J.

And you can read all about it here.

This women’s history timeline from the Onion is hilarious.

I got this question from the Imagination Prompt Generator (check it out!)
Who do you miss the most from your past?

The person I miss the most from my past is my Grandmother Veronica.  She passed away when I was 20 years old (two weeks shy of my 21st birthday.)  I had just returned from studying abroad in Cork, Ireland where my grandmother’s family is originally from.  When I returned to the States, I was excited to start learning more and reconnecting with my family.

I was on a Fourth of July trip with my family when my grandmother became sick and had to be hospitalized.  She passed away within days.  What followed was a very difficult period of my life but during that time I decided to do a M.A. in American History.

My grandmother Veronica encouraged my love of history: American history, Irish history, and our family history.  She always made sure I knew what our family did to help establish the town that she, my grandfather, my fathers and aunts grew up in.  It wasn’t an ownership pride but the type of pride in knowing that you and your ancestors are part of a much larger picture than the present.

I’m sad when I think that my grandmother didn’t see me graduate from college or receive my M.A.  I wish she was there when I called my grandpa to tell him when I was engaged.  I wish she was there for my wedding shower that we had in the house she was born in.  And I wish she could have seen her son walk me down the aisle at my wedding.

But nothing replaces the love of history that she encouraged.

In 1977, when the women who would establish the National Women’s History Project began planning a women’s history week, March 8th, International Women’s Day, was chosen as the focal date.The selection was based on wanting to ensure that the celebration of women’s history would include a multicultural perspective, an international connection between and among all women, and the recognition of women as significant in the paid workforce.

Women’s History Week, always the week that included March 8th, became National Women’s History Week in 1981 and in 1987 National Women’s History Week became National Women’s History Month. The expansion from local to national and from week to month was the result of a lobbying effort that included hundreds of individuals and dozens of women’s, educational, and historical organizations. It was an effort mobilized and spearheaded by the National Women’s History Project.

From National Women’s History Project 

Wrap up on Black History Month:

On February first, I promised a lot that I did not deliver.  I haven’t stayed true to my word of featuring news stories about black history month.  Trying to be a diligent blogger is one thing but trying to be an attentive wife, best friend, good daughter, an impending matron (hate that word) of honor (and oh yeah my day job) and blog diligently is even harder.

Still it would be hard not mention this story.

SO here’s my proposal, I’m going to write about notable African American women throughout this month…

WOMEN”S HISTORY MONTH!!!! 

Before I go any further, you must go to the website for the National Women’s History Project. Go and read everything there.  They recently redesigned their site and it rocks!

It’s only only appropriate to begin the celebration of this month by sharing how I first learned about women’s history.

From an essay I wrote in graduate school:

From the second grade on I remember national women’s history month as a part a regular part of the curriculum. It never occurred to me in 1988 that celebrating women’s history each year in March was a relatively new phenomenon. It just seemed so naturally that we would celebrate women’s history.  In my second grade class, I remember my teacher, Mrs. Bigelow, giving us tests each month.  Never a good test taker, I dredged these monthly horrors, as I never received above a B+.  So that march, I remember sitting down with my mother and going over all the names of the woman who would be on the women’s history month test the next day.

My nerves were eased as soon as I realized this would not be the usual sit down at your desk test.  Mrs. Bigelow had us sit around in a circle and asked us each a question.  If we got our first question right we received an A and were done.  I remember Mrs. Bigelow asking me who the first female pilot was to cross the Atlantic Sea.  “Amelia Earheart” I said loudly sure of myself.
I received an A.  It was the first A I received that year.  As I grew older and moved from public elementary school in Washington DC to my private middle and high school in New York City, I started to notice subtle inconsistencies as my history teacher’s distrust of the textbooks became more than apparent.  To supplement the blurbs in textbooks about women, we were given additional primary sources and essays for reading. As I grew older and graduated from high school and entered a liberal arts college, I found that I gravitated toward independent studies about women and feminism.  It was only natural that I would decided to pursue graduate work in history.

This article from thursday’s LATimes examined how immediate families of Iraq War soldiers are suffering but also live through their pain and recuperate.  The story chronicled Audrey Delgadillo, 20 year old daughter of an Iraq War soldier, takes care of her four younger sisters.   Whats more is that Delgadillo is filling in for her stepfather AND mother who are serving in Iraq.

Every day, Delgadillo wakes up and takes care of her youngest sisters, a three and four year old.  Her other sisters are 17 and 10 years old and usually make it to school on their own.   In addition to day to day child care, Delgadillo also works a full-time job and looks after housekeeping and financial obligations.

She returns home and checks her list of chores scribbled in her notebook. Some errands are already crossed out.

Clean my room. Mop. Pay house bills. Get oil changes for the Ford and Saturn. Send out mom’s package. Put drawer together. Clean frontyard.

Some could argue that Delgadillo is sacrificing too much for a woman who  is only 20.  She should be out partying with her friends, going to school, and spending time with a boyfriend–she does have a fiance.   But what Delgadillo is doing is providing a strong, female  role model for her younger sisters while their mother is away.  By assuming responsibilities of a primary caregiver, she is showing her younger sisters it is tough but possible to balance one’s familial, social, and personal lives.  Delgadillo is operating as an alternative to the kind of women that the media perpetuates on a regular basis: smart, brave, and not one to shy away from a seemingly insurmountable task which outwardly seems impossible.

Delgadillo does admit she does feel like she is missing out on typical parts of a 20 year old woman’s life but as she told her mother:

I told my mom, ‘Don’t ever feel like you put this on me,’ ” Delgadillo says. “It was my decision, and we knew since she joined the Army that one day she was going to be called.”

At a time when the Iraq war is  ending too may lives in  savage ways and causing so much political and ideological friction at home, this story reminds me that we need to be looking toward our families and the needs of the younger generations. Clearly, Delgadillo is helping her mother raise some lucky young girls who have two maternal figures to look up to.  The Delgadillo family is further proof that the face of the American family is changing whether we can keep up or not.

Whatever one’s political opinions are at the end of the day, it cannot be denied that Delgadillo is only further reinforcing the value  and variety of women’s contributions.

If this goes through, women’s place in academia and in the historical profession will never be the same.

I know I sound cliche but I’m excited!

MinnieJean Trickey Brown
This past fall, I attended a conference in Little Rock, AR. While I was there, I went by the historic Central High School, where several African-American students were the first students of color at the all white high school. While facing certain adversity, the students attended the school and made history.

One in particular, Minnijean Brown Trickey committed her work as a teacher to peacemaking, diversity education and training, environmental issues, gender and social justice advocacy. She also served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Workforce Diversity at the Department of the Interior for the Clinton administration.

This year Minniejean is being honored by the National Women’s History Project for her life’s work so far. Their theme is Generations of Women Moving History Forward.

In an article from 2005, Minnijean commented on her role at Central High School:

“Our resistance was so powerful,” she recalled. “I was living history.”

She also expressed her views on the vitality of Black History Month:

“Black History Month is American history at its very core.”

Minniejean is also the definition of American History and why it should be studied.

Molly Ivins dies of cancer at 62

AUSTIN, Texas - Best-selling author and columnist Molly Ivins, the sharp-witted liberal who skewered the political establishment died Wednesday after a long battle with breast cancer. She was 62.

More than 400 newspapers subscribed to her nationally syndicated column, which combined strong liberal views and populist humor. Ivins’ illness did not seem to hurt her ability to deliver biting one-liners.

Some details about Ms. Ivins

• She worked was the first woman police reporter in the Minneapolis. Subsequently, the Minneapolis police force’s decided to name its mascot pig after her.
• She studied in Paris for a year at the Institute of Political Sciences.
• Sources say her humor and wit were a bit too much for The New York Times.