Giving Thanks For

At Parc Guell in Barcelona - Dream Turned Reality

This year I wanted to focus on the good that has come from adversity and/or disappointment.  So I am giving thanks for…

• Strangers who fill in the gap when close friends break their word, leaving you exposed and hurt.
• Friends and acquaintances who compassionately give you a moment to feel angry/sad/disappointed before affirming that you can take care of yourself when others don’t.
• Knowing that life is not a 30 or 60 minute drama or situation comedy:  it sometimes takes longer to get over things and you can’t skip to the end where everything is lovey dovey again.
• Learning and accepting that I would rather hear an honest “No,” “I can’t,” or “I don’t want to” than get the answer I want yet have a poor outcome.
• Being okay with pursuing unfulfilled dreams and desires, even if it means I have to go it alone.
• Awakening to the fact that dreaming too much can keep you from creating the reality you desire.
• Realizing that you can forgive someone without allowing them to repeat the same offenses.
• Experiences that pushed me WAY out of my comfort zone showing me my true limits, strengths, foibles, principles, desires and areas for growth.
• Being able to return to a church after a 6 year absence without having to give an excuse or story for why I’d left in the first place.
• Starting to see and navigate that expanse between obligation, compassion, good citizenship and holding others accountable for fulfilling their obligations, being compassionate and being a good citizen.
• Accepting that when I unboundedly accommodate others, I am hiding my true self.

Have a grateful, healthful, joyful and blessing-filled Thanksgiving Day!

Gwendolyn Brooks: 1st African American Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry

Gwendolyn Brooks, Poet

Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000)

Think of sweet and choclate,
Left to folly or to fate,
Whom the higher gods forgot,
Whom the lower gods berate;
Physical and underfed
Fancying on a featherbed
What was never and is not.

What is ever and is not.
Pretty tatters blue and red,
Buxon berries beyond rot,
Western clouds and quarter-stars,
Fairy-sweet of old guitars
Littering the little head
Light upon the featherbed.
– From The Anniad contained in Annie Allen¹

Gwendolyn Brooks was born in Topeka, Kansas on June 7, 1917.  Her mother was a school teacher, her father a janitor.  Brooks grew up in Chicago, Illinois and sought solace in her writing as the other children spurned her.  By the time she was sixteen, Gwendolyn had written over seventy-five poems.  Her first published volume was A Street in Bronzeville (1945).  Her second collection, Annie Allen, was published in 1949.  In 1950 Gwendolyn Brooks became the first African American to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.  In 1990 Chicago State University founded the Gwendolyn Brooks Center.  Gwendolyn Brooks died of cancer in her home on December 3, 2000.²

¹Stetson, Erlene (Ed.). (1981). Black Sister: Poetry by Black American Women.  Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
²Mini-bio compiled from Notable Biographies, Gwendolyn Brooks Biography
Photo from AfroPoets.net

Mary Astor: The Cameo Girl

Mary Astor (1906-1987)

“A painter paints, a musician plays, a writer writes – but a movie actor waits.”

“A person without a memory is either a child or an amnesiac. A country without a memory is neither a child nor an amnesiac, but neither is it a country.”¹

Mary Astor was born Lucile Vasconcellos Langhanke on May 3, 1906 in Quincy, Illinois.  She was entered into a beauty contest by her father at the age of fourteen and appeared in her first film a year later.  Astor was selected by John Barrymore to co-star in Beau Brummel (1924) and also starred with him in Don Juan (1926).  Don Juan was the first silent movie which had an accompanying disc (Vitaphone) with music and sound effects.  Astor had a long, respected career and earned an Oscar in 1941 for best supporting actress due to her role in The Great Lie (1941) in which she played a selfish concert pianist.  She was known as “The Cameo Girl” due to her delicate beauty and renowned appearance.

Mary Astor wrote two memoirs and several works of fiction.^2
1Quotes from Creative Quotations
²Mini-bio compiled from Biography.com and TVRage.com
Photo from Meredy.com

Rebecca Lee Crumpler: 1st Black Female Doctor

“It may be well to state here that, having been reared by a kind aunt in Pennsylvania, whose usefulness with the sick was continually sought, I early conceived a liking for, and sought every opportunity to relieve the sufferings of others. Later in life I devoted my time, when best I could, to nursing as a business, serving under different doctors for a period of eight years from 1852 to 1860; most of the time at my adopted home in Charlestown, Middlesex County, Massachusetts. From these doctors I received letters commending me to the faculty of the New England Female Medical College, whence, four years afterward, I received the degree of doctress of medicine.”

“[A] proper field for real missionary work, and one that would present ample opportunities to become acquainted with the diseases of women and children. During my stay there [in Richmond, Virginia] nearly every hour was improved in that sphere of labor. The last quarter of the year 1866, I was enabled . . . to have access each day to a very large number of the indigent, and others of different classes, in a population of over 30,000 colored.”¹

Dr. Crumpler became the first African American woman to earn an M.D. in 1864 when she graduated from New England Female Medical College.  Her Book of Medical Discourses published in 1883 was one of the first medical publications by an African American.  Crumpler was raised by an aunt who spent much of her time caring for sick neighbors.  Not much is known about Dr. Crumpler other than what was contained in the introduction to her book and there are no surviving photos or images.²

¹Rebecca Lee Crumpler: Biography, Serving History
²Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler, Changing the face of medicine

Helena Rubenstein: Making Money from Makeup

Helena Rubenstein

“Men are just as vain as women, and sometimes even more so.”

“Whether you are sixteen or over sixty, remember, understatement is the rule of a fine makeup artist.”

“All the American women had purple noses and gray lips and their faces were chalk white from terrible powder. I recognized that the United States could be my life’s work.”¹

Helena Rubenstein was born on December 25, 1870 in Crakow, Poland.  The oldest of 8 daughters and no sons, she wound up assisting her father, a wholesale food broker, with the bookkeeping.  Helena went to stay with an uncle in Australia after terminating her medical studies (her father had decided she would be a doctor) and refusing to marry the thirty-five-year-old wealthy widower her father had selected.

It was in Australia that Helena realized there was a market for beauty products.  She had brought several jars of her mother’s beauty cream, made by Hungarian chemist Dr. Jacob Lykusky, with her to Australia and upon seeing her beautiful skin, the sun damaged Australian women quickly purchased her supply.  With a loan from a satisfied customer, she opened a shop in Melbourne, received country-wide publicity when Women’s page editor Eugenia Stone came from Sydney to interview her and ultimately made enough to bring Dr. Lykusky to Australia.

Helena moved to New York City in 1915 and opened a salon at 8 East 49^th Street.  She expanded her operations throughout the US but sold it to Lehman Brothers in an attempt to focus more attention on her failing marriage.  The marriage ended; Lehman Brothers was not conducting the business in line with what the customers had come to expect and Rubenstein quietly began purchasing stocks on the open market while encouraging other stockholders to complain about how the company was being managed.  When the stock market crashed Rubenstein was able to buy back the company at a fraction of what Lehman Brothers had originally paid her.

At the time of Helena Rubenstein’s death, her business was worth an estimated $17.5 million to $60 million.  It had international holdings including labs, salons and factories in fourteen countries.  Rubenstein had also established the Helena Rubenstein Foundation to provide money for the arts and to charitable institutions.  Incidentally until the writing of this mini-bio I only knew the name Helena Rubenstein in connection with the foundation whose name I have seen in association with PBS shows since childhood.²

¹Quotes from Brainy Quote
²Mini-bio compiled from Helena Rubenstein by Sara Alpern, Jewish Women’s Archive
Photo from Wikipedia
Featured image from Jennifer Ouellette’s blog

Indira Gandhi, 3rd Prime Minister of Independent India

Indira Gandhi, PM of India

Indira Gandhi (1917-1984)

“As I said, we do have many shortcomings, whether it is the government, whether it is the society. Some are due to our traditions because, as I said, not all tradition is good. And one of the biggest responsibilities of the educated women today is how to synthesise what has been valuable and timeless in our ancient traditions with what is good and valuable in modern thought. All that is modern is not good just as all that is old is neither all good nor all bad. We have to decide, not once and for all but almost every week, every month what is coming out that is good and useful to our country and what of the old we can keep and enshrine in our society. To be modern, most people think that it is something of a manner of dress or a manner of speaking or certain habits and customs, but that is not really being modern. It is a very superficial part of modernity.”

“Some people think that only by taking up very high jobs, you are doing something important or you are doing national service. But we all know that the most complex machinery will be ineffective if one small screw is not working as it should and that screw is just as important as any big part. It is the same in national life. There is no job that is too small; there is no person who is too small. Everybody has something to do. And if he or she does it well, then the country will run well. “¹

Indira Gandhi was the daughter of the first prime minister of India however she led a very unsettled childhood due to the fact that her family was involved in the fight for freedom from British rule.  For instance, she did not attend school consistently since her father, Jawaharlal Nehru, opposed institutions run by the British government. 

Gandhi married in March of 1942 and shortly afterward was arrested, as was her husband, and spent 13 months in jail for her role in nationalist political demonstrations against British rule.  While in jail she taught reading and writing to prisoners.

British control of India ended on August 15, 1947 and India was immediately divided into two countries – India and Pakistan.  Violence erupted as Hindus and Moslems clashed.  Indira and her father brought the opposed groups together for talks in New Delhi in an attempt to broker peace.

In 1966 Indira Gandhi became the third prime minister of India.  The country was facing a number of challenges: the war with Pakistan had ended a week before she took office, India was in the middle of a 2-year drought, prices and unemployment were on the rise, and the political situation was shaky as the popularity of Gandhi’s party which had lead the fight for freedom against Britain, was on the wane.

Gandhi reorganized her political party which resulted in a split with the younger, more liberal and progressive elements siding with her.  She allied with other parties to maintain control.  Her platform was to improve the quality of life of the people of India by taking a more aggressive approach to social and economic change.  Gandhi lost her position as prime minister in 1977 and regained it in 1979.

Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh security guards on October 31, 1984 in retaliation for having ordered troops to storm the Sikh sacred Golden Temple in Amritsar where Sikh separatists were holed up with weapons.  Many Sikhs were killed when the uprising was put down.²

¹What Educated Women Can Do by Indira Gandhi at the Golden Jubilee Celebrations Of The Indraprastha College For Women, New Delhi, India, November 23, 1974
²Compiled from Notable Biographies
Embedded photo by Bettman/CORBIS, found at Bhavanajagat
Featured image photo from Our India

Marjorie Brasuhn: She Helped Put Roller Derby On The Map

Toughie Brasuhn, Roller Derby Star

Marjorie Brasuhn Monte (1923? to 1971)

About Marjorie Brasuhn aka Midge “Toughie” Brasuhn:

It all started with two gals back in the 1930s, Barbee explains. The beautiful, fashionable Gerry Murray — “the Betty Grable pinup of roller derby” — who was pitted against Midge “Toughie” Brasuhn — “a 4-foot-11 spitfire plumber’s daughter.” The young women were just teenagers at the time, and crowds loved to cheer for Gerry and boo for Toughie.

At one game, a female fan became so incensed by an aggressive move by Toughie that she ran up to the track — and threw her baby at the skater. Thankfully, Toughie had lightning-quick athlete reflexes and caught the child.

“For me, that’s derby in a nutshell,” Barbee says. “I want those kinds of fans” … but minus the baby throwing.¹

 Marjorie Brasuhn participated in roller derby in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s; she was known as Midge “Toughie” Brasuhn.  She came from a German family in St. Paul Minnesota.  Her father was a plumber; her mother a cleaning lady.  Marjorie’s 4’11”, 135 pound physique earned her the nickname Midge.  According to her husband she was very aggressive in the rink and would knock the other girls’ heads off if they didn’t respect her. “She knew how to make a point.”  Midge was known for her rivalry with Gerry Murray which helped establish the game/industry by giving people something to look forward to.²

 
¹Quote from These Roller Skating Women Get ‘Down And Derby’,  Jennifer Barbee and Alex Cohen, August 31, 2010 viewed on NPR.org April 1, 2011
²Mini-bio drawn from Derby Memoirs
Toughie Brasuhn photo from Major League Roller Derby
Featured photo from Derby Memoirs