A Woman's Place

Thought for the day:  For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.  [Virginia Woolf]

Know what today is...? Give up?

It's International Women's Day. (Yeah... really!)

The tradition started in 1910, but its roots were based in socialism, so for many years, only places like Russia and Eastern Europe paid any attention to it. That is, until 1977, when the U.N. finally climbed aboard, and officially proclaimed March 8 to thereafter be known as
International Women's Day.


So where's my damned cake?




A woman is like a teabag: you can't tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water.  [Eleanor Roosevelt]

Okay, no cake to go with my tea. (For now.) Nonetheless, I'll honor the day by telling you a little something about a little-known kick-ass American woman who deserves a spot in our history books.

Okay, quick: Who was the first woman in American history to run for national office?

If you said 1984 V.P. candidate Geraldine Ferraro...

you would be...

 ( Ding-Ding-Ding!) wrong.

She was the first to be nominated by a major party, but would you believe the first woman, who actually ran for President, did so fifty years before women were even granted the right to vote?

I kid you not. That lady had some serious kinda chutzpah.

Yep, her name was Victoria Woodhull, and in 1872, the Equal Rights Party nominated her as its presidential candidate. Equal rights is exactly what she believed in, too... for women, for blacks, and for the working class.A year earlier, she became the first woman in history to appear before the House Judiciary Committee, where she delivered an impassioned and articulate argument for women's suffrage. And she had other radical outside-the-box ideas, too, such as an eight-hour workday, graduated income tax, social welfare programs, and profit-sharing. Not exactly mainstream thinking for her day.

In 1870, before she ran for office, she was the first woman to open a Wall Street brokerage firm. Made a boatload of money, too, some of which she used to become the first woman to found a weekly newspaper. The purpose of the paper was to support her run for office, and its primary interest was feminism. During its six years of publication, the paper covered such taboo topics as sex education, free love, women's suffrage, short skirts, spiritualism, vegetarianism, and licensed prostitution.

I used to be Snow White, and then I drifted. [Mae West]

Uh, yeah, I did say free love. Not an orgy-filled, spouse-swapping kind of free love, mind you, although by the way she was treated by many people of her time, you would have thought that's exactly what she was espousing. What she believed in was a woman's right to marry, divorce and bear children as she saw fit... without governmental interference.

At right is a Thomas Nast caricature of Woodhull, depicting her as Mrs. Satan. She's holding a sign that says, Be saved by FREE LOVE, and behind her is a woman, laden with children and a drunken husband. In the caption, the woman tells Mrs. Satan, I'd rather travel the hardest path of matrimony than follow your footsteps. 

See? Not even the women of Woodhull's day supported her ideas. Not that it mattered... they couldn't vote.

Some people think having large breasts makes a woman stupid. Actually, it's quite the opposite: a woman having large breasts makes men stupid.  [Rita Ruder]

Oh, there's a lot more to the story of Victoria Woodhull... like her dabbling in magnetic healing and spiritualism; her friendship with Cornelius Vanderbilt; and why she was thrown into jail two days before the 1872 election... on obscenity charges.

But I said I was only gonna tell you a little something about Ms. Woodhull, so suffice it to say, she didn't receive a single electoral vote. Following the election, she said, The truth is that I am too many years ahead of this age and the exalted views and objects of humanitarianism can scarcely be grasped as yet by the unenlightened mind of the average man. 

Okay, so I never said she was humble. But she was right. Many of the reforms she campaigned for, considered extreme and controversial in her time, later came to pass. By the way, know who her running mate was? Frederick Douglass... the first black man nominated for national office.

How do you know if it's time to wash the dishes and clean your house? Look inside your pants. If you see a penis in there, it's not time.  [Jo Brand]

Well, it's not time for me to wash the dishes and clean house, either. Not yet. It's time to bake myself a damned cake. I am woman; hear me roar!

A woman should always know her place. Yep, by golly, a woman's place is in the House... and the Senate... and maybe someday...  the White House.

So on this day, International Women's Day, let us raise a glass to all those wonderful women worldwide, both known and unknown, who spent (and continue to spend) their lives striving to make this world a better place, and who exemplify these words by Maya Angelou: ... you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands. You need to be able to throw something back.

I always wanted to be somebody, but now I realize I should have been more specific.  [Lily Tomlin]

             Oh, yeah... a timely reminder: Daylight Savings Time returns this weekend.

                                 Okay, one final thing before putting this post to bed...

Tiny Harmonies bloghop kicks off today. Represented by the ultra-sweet marshmallow peep to the left, this hop is yet another brainchild of the ultra-sweet Suze.

The idea is for participants to write a haiku every Friday for the next few weeks, based on a prompt she will provide. This week, the prompt consists of a single word:  origin. I decided to tie it in with the subject of my post.

With my deepest apologies to anyone who is actually good at these things, here is my tiny offering:

                                         Brazen seeds of thought,
                                         Sown now, bereft of sunshine,
                                         Shall bloom in due time.

                             Until next time, take care of yourselves. And each other.

[Images come from Wikipedia, icanhascheezburger, and... Suze.]

On Raising the Dead

Thought for the day:  Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world.  Dr. Victor Frankenstein

This writer knows how to put flesh on those bones.

The thought for the day could very well have been uttered by Dianne Salerni. Not that she created scary monsters from bits and pieces. No, nothing as sinister as that. What she did is dust off the bare bones of people from the past, put flesh on them, breathe air into their lungs, pump blood through their bodies, and give them substance and emotions. Her book We Hear the Dead successfully floods the dark past with a torrent of light, and makes a somewhat obscure history sparkle with renewed life. Essentially, in telling this tale about the Fox sisters, spiritualism, and talking to the dead, she masterfully raises these characters from the dead, and makes them live again.

Fox sisters Maggie, Kate, and Leah

The mysterious rapping began as a devious plot to drive away an unwanted house guest, but as rumors spread, and more and more people crowded into their bedroom to hear the spirits, young sisters Katie and Maggie simply gave the people what they wanted to hear. When older sister Leah discovered their chicanery, she coerced them into continuing the fraud on a grander scale, with more sophisticated tricks, and her, of course,  in charge ... charging clients a fee.

Thus began the spiritualism movement. And, believe me, not everyone was happy about it, either. The girls were as likely to be met with shotgun fire or a vat of hot tar as they were with a shower of accolades. Theirs is a fascinating tale, from the descriptions of their tricks of the trade, to the agonizing choice Maggie has to make between the way of life she knows with her family, and the uncertainty of life waiting in a remote location for  the man she loves, Elisha Kane, a celebrated Arctic explorer ... whose wealthy family wants nothing more than to keep a common guttersnipe like Maggie out of his life.

Frauds, one and all, right? Maybe. Maybe not. You'll have to read the book, and decide for yourself. But I can tell you one thing. I don't need a Ouiji board to make a sure-fire prediction ... you're gonna love this book.

After finishing her book, I had some questions for Dianne, and she most graciously provided the answers.

Q: Of all the obscure, potentially interesting stories to be found in the history books, why this one? How did you find out about the Fox sisters, and what drew you to their story?
A: I didn't start out to write a historical fiction book. I was researching seances and mediums with a vague idea about writing a humorous story about fraudulent mediums.  But the story of the Fox sisters kept coming up in my research, and the idea that the entire spiritualist movement began with two girls aged 14 and 11 fascinated me.  So, I bought a biography of the Fox sisters, Talking to the Dead by Barbara Weisburg.  By the time I got to the part about Maggie Fox's star-crossed romance with Arctic explorer Elisha Kane, I was hooked.  I knew I wanted to novelize Maggie's story.
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Q: How much of your book is based on historical facts, and how much on imagination?
A: Everything that happens in We Hear the Dead really did happen, based on historical record.  Where my imagination came into play was deciding WHY it happened and HOW it happened.  The girls lied; their sister lied; their clients lied to save face. Elisha's family claimed he was never seriously involved with Maggie; his letters suggest otherwise.  I fictionalized the story to emphasize the dramatic elements -- and to fill in the gaps where nobody wanted to tell the truth!
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Q: Was your research fairly easy-going, or was it difficult to find information about the Fox family?
A: There are several biographies on the Fox sisters and also on Elisha Kane, so it was easy to find information on their lives.  I even acquired Kane's book Arctic Explorations and got to read about his adventures in his own words.  There were gaps, as I mentioned -- places where information is missing.  I don't REALLY know how Maggie got out of Troy when those men tried to kill her, for instance.  But I know my explanation fits all the facts. It might even be true!
++++

Q:  Is it true a movie is in the works, based on your book? And you're doing the screenplay yourself?
A: There is a film option on the book, which doesn't guarantee a movie will be made.  And I did, in fact, write a screenplay which has also been optioned and is currently making the rounds of submission in Hollywood.  There is a lot of "might" and "if" involved in this process, and I've already had a near miss once.  But anybody who wants to keep their fingers crossed for me -- I'll appreciate the good wishes!
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Q: What's next? Can we look forward to more books from you that make history come alive?
A: My next book, The Caged Graves, will be published by Clarion Books. I don't have a release date yet, but Goodreads predicts 2013, and who am I to argue with Goodreads?  The Caged Graves is also historical fiction.  The story was inspired by two real graves in an abandoned cemetery in Catawissa, PA that are surrounded by iron cages.  The women buried there were sisters-in-law who died within a couple days of one another in 1852.  Local historians have been unable to determine why their families thought it necessary to enclose the graves in cages -- so I had free reign to write their story any way I wanted!
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Q: Anything else you'd like to add?
A: Just that I'm thrilled you enjoyed my book!  Interestingly enough, I was recently contacted by a descendant of Elisha Kane -- his great great great niece -- who read We Hear the Dead.  I held my breath, but turns out she liked my portrayal of Elisha and didn't mind the terrible things I said about the rest of his family. Phew!  It does make me wonder who might turn up, claiming a relation to the women in those graves some day ...

Dianne Salerni
We Hear the Dead (Sourcebooks 2010)
The Caged Graves (coming from Clarion)
http://www.diannesalerni.com
http://diannesalerni.blogspot.com/
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Thanks so much, Dianne, and you betcha we have our fingers crossed for your book's screenplay  making it to the big (or little) screen. Either way, it'd make a terrific movie!

And now, folks, to pique interest in her next book, Dianne's provided some intriguing pictures.

Doesn't this make you wonder ...?

I can hardly wait to read Dianne's explanation.

                                        Until next time, take care of yourselves. And each other.