A Seat at Her Table

  History is like a great big ball of bread dough. Every day – every second of every day – history happens. The dough ball swells as the yeast of time goes to work on it. And so no human brain can possibly contain every important date or every noteworthy person who ever lived. And there is no way that a single book – or even a shelf of encyclopedias, or these days, even a website – could cover the rise and fall of every nation and empire from the ancient Americas across to the lands of Africa, Europe, Asia, Australia and Oceania. The classroom classics of decades ago shift and make way for newer ones. And yet, we try. We who love people and history, we try. We learn places and people and events and we labor all our lives to blow off the dust, to keep the light shining, to bail with our little buckets the sand that is constantly pouring into the hole. So Nellie Bly. That's her pen name. She was born Elizabeth Jane Cochran.  Today, May 5, is her birthday. May 5, 1864, in Cochran...

 What were you doing at 16?  Lesley Gore was a junior in high school. And she was watching her cover of "It's My Party" skyrocket to a number one hit.  Pretty cool.  It would be her birthday today, May 2, if lung cancer hadn't taken her from us too early. Lung cancer, even though she didn't smoke. It does happen. Ms. Gore seemed to have that odd combination of misfortune and great luck. What she called her signature song, "You Don't Own Me," -- so powerful, so different from the kiddish "It's My Party," was only kept from becoming her second number one by a certain unbeatable musical phenomenon known as the Beatles wanting to hold your hand. She came close but never had another number one. Meanwhile, she played a minion of Catwoman on the Batman t.v. series. Later composed songs for the soundtrack of 1980's "Fame." Received an Academy Award nomination. And participated in a 2008 documentary, "Airplay: The Rise and Fal...

 In the farming region of Norwich Township, Ontario, Canada, on May 1, 1831, Emily Jennings Stowe entered the world.  All these years later, the region is still largely agricultural, even if tobacco farming is giving way to more modern crops.  Emily became Canada's first practicing female physician and a founder of the women's suffrage movement in Canada. Homeschooled, in a Quaker community that encouraged education for women, and taught herbal remedies by her mother, she pursued a teaching career until her husband contracted tuberculosis. That led her to focus instead on medicine.  Of course she faced obstacles. The Toronto School of Medicine denied her access because of her gender, so in 1867 she went to New York and earned her degree. She then promptly returned to Canada to open a medical practice in Ontario. Her fight was only just beginning. And it wasn't until 1880 that the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario finally granted her a license to practice ...

 So she liked to drink, in the wild saloons of the Wild West. So she smoked and she cussed and she knew how to put a bullet where she wanted it to go. A woman had to be tough out there to survive. I think there's a place in heaven for Stagecoach Mary, aka Mary Fields.  I don't know her birthdate. Chances are, she didn't either. See, she was born a slave in Tennessee, most likely around 1832. And from there, her wild adventure of a life began. Emancipation after the Civil War. Then work on the Robert E. Lee Mississippi River steamboat. From there, working for a judge, then for his sister, Mother Amadeus, a nun at a Roman Catholic convent in Ohio.  Some years later, in 1884, we find our Mary at St. Peter's Mission in Montana Territory, where she had hastened upon the news that her beloved Mother Amadeus was sick. She was hearty, potty-mouthed and very helpful. Too hearty and too potty-mouthed for the local bishop, and her days at the Mission were abruptly terminated.  ...

  Nothing humbles a person quite like doing a little research, to realize how much you don’t know. How much you haven’t seen. How much of the universe has gone about its business completely indifferent to you. Today I salute a woman whose name I did not know until this morning, whose existence utterly bypassed me – notwithstanding she has been on the big screen for almost 30 years, has won heaps of well-deserved praise and awards, and is probably quite familiar to some of my friends. Happy birthday to Kimberly Elise (Trammel) Born in 1967 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, you attended the American Film Institute. In 1996, you starred in the hit, Set it Off, which I may be one of the few people in the USA to have never seen. Then you played a role in The Ditchdigger’s Daughters ; and followed that up with a part in Beloved , based on the book by Toni Morrison. None of which I saw, living under my little rock. That’s just a hint of your busy career, the richness of your abilities as an act...

  She seemed to like self-portraits. And there is Nothing Wrong with that. Because in my opinion, self-confidence is a beautiful thing. You need it when you are a largely self-taught artist, and a woman at that – a woman working to survive in the 18 th  century, trying to keep your neck out of the guillotine of the French Revolution. Such was the life of Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun, born April 16, 1755. Besides, one of the best of her self-portraits, in my opinion, is a tender depiction of her with her daughter. She is smiling, slightly open-mouthed. It’s an “awe-sweet” work of art for our modern eyes. It was a scandal to her contemporaries. You didn’t depict people, especially yourself, with an open-mouthed smile, not by the rules of art in 18 th  Century France. Maybe all the people with rotten teeth resented people who had nice ones to show off. Of course, Elisabeth painted plenty of portraits of other people, including various members of royalty. She was a Royalist, certa...