206: The Self-Empowered Woman: My Holiday Wish for You

Dear Followers,

I received this amusing email from my late father-in-law's widow, and thought I'd pass it along.  Helen is in her 80s, and it's nice to know that a good sense of humor doesn't fade.  Enjoy...

 

 

Merry Christmas To My Female Friends If I were ol' Santa, you know what I'd do I'd dump silly gifts that are given to you And deliver some things just inside your front door Things you have lost, but treasured before. I'd give you back all your maidenly vigor, And to go along with it, a neat tiny figure. Then restore the old color that once graced your hair Before rinses and bleaches took residence there. I'd bring back the shape with which you were gifted So things now suspended need not be uplifted. I'd draw in your tummy and smooth down your back Till you'd be a dream in those tight fitting slacks. I'd remove all your wrinkles and leave only one chin So you wouldn't spend hours rubbing grease on your skin. You'd never have flashes or queer dizzy spells, And you wouldn't hear noises like ringing of bells. No sore aching feet and no corns on your toes, No searching for spectacles when they're right on your nose. Not a shot would you take in your arm, hip or fanny, From a doctor who thinks you're a nervous old granny. You'd never have a headache, so no pills would you take. And no heating pad needed since your muscles won't ache. Yes, if I were Santa, you'd never look stupid, You'd be a cute little chick with the romance of a cupid. I'd give a lift to your heart when those wolves start to whistle, And the joys of your heart would be light as a thistle. But alas! I'm not Santa. I'm simply just me, The matronest of matrons you ever did see. I wish I could tell you all the symptoms I've got, But I'm due at my doctor's for an estrogen shot. Even though we've grown older, this wish is sincere, Merry Christmas to you and a Happy New Year. Save the Earth; it is the only planet with chocolate!

 



205: The Self-Empowered Woman: Dr. Ruth Westheimer

Dear Followers,

 

Practically everyone knows that Dr. Ruth--who studied at the Sorbonne and rose to fame in the 1980s--is America's most popular sex therapist. But few know about her life before success and stardom.

 

Her birth name was Karola Ruth Siegel, and she was born in Wiesenfeld, Germany in June 1928. Her parents (she was an only child) were Orthodox Jews (3: Belief In The Unbelievable), and soon afterwards Hitler began actively promoting genocide against the Jews. When she was ten years old, her father was taken by the Nazis (1: No Paternal Safety Net), and in January 1939, her mother and grandmother sent her to an orphanage in Switzerland. Letters from her parents stopped arriving by September 1941, and four years later she learned that her parents had been murdered in the Holocaust, probably at Auschwitz (12: Hard Times).

 

As a teenager, she emigrated to Palestine, where she joined the Haganah as a scout and sniper (11: Risk Addiction). When an exploding shell seriously wounded her in the Israeli War of Independence in 1948, she was unable to walk for several months. Two years later she moved to Paris, and six years after that she immigrated to the United States (14: Selective Disassociation).

 

Dr. Ruth speaks English, French, German and Hebrew, and has written a number of books on human sexuality. She received her master's degree in sociology from The New School; her doctorate in education is from Columbia. She completed her post-doctoral work in human sexuality at New York-Presbyterian Hospital (10: The Critic Within).

 

In 1980, Maurice Tunick, who was the program coordinator at WYNY (NBC Radio's New York City station) joined with Betty Elam to launch a fifteen minute program at midnight on Sunday night starring Dr. Ruth and called "Sexually Speaking" (4: Supportive Someone). Within two months the show was expanded to an hour, and soon Dr. Ruth was appearing on TV shows like David Letterman. By 1982, Lifetime cable gave Dr. Ruth her first TV show, and she has also appeared on Israeli TV, PBS and has made guest appearances on a wide variety of programs (13: More Than Meets The Eye). 

 

Dr. Ruth is only four foot seven, wears size four shoes, has been married three times, and has a son and a daughter (who both have earned doctorates in education, just like their mother) and several grandchildren. At 85, she remains active, and recently allowed a New York Times reporter to write about her three-bedroom apartment in Washington Heights, Manhattan.

 

Looking forward to your comments...



204 The Self-Empowered Woman: Mary Poppins/ P.L. Travers

Dear Followers,



 



Since there's been a great deal of publicity lately regarding the new film Saving Mr. Banks (starring Tom Hanks as Walt Disney and Emma Thompson as the irritable P.L. Travers), this seems like a good time to learn more about the woman who created Mary Poppins. Pamela Lyndon Travers was born on August 9th, 1899 in Queensland Australia, and her birth name was Helen Lyndon Goff. Her mother was the niece of the Premier of Queensland, and her alcoholic father was an unsuccessful bank manager who died of influenza when Helen was only eight years old (1: No Paternal Safety Net).

 

Biographers believe that her creative career choice actually began only a few weeks after her father died. Her grief-stricken mother (who planned to drown herself in a nearby creek) had left her alone at home and in charge of her two younger sisters on a dark stormy night. To entertain her sisters she told them a fairytale about a magical white horse that could fly even though it had no wings--26 years later she would write about a magical nanny who could also fly without wings. And as a teenager, she also wrote poems and articles for local publications (2: An Early Sense Of Direction).

 

After her father's death, the family moved to New Zealand, but soon Helen changed her name to Pamela Lyndon Travers, and moved to Sydney where she began a career as a writer, dancer and model. When she was 24, she travelled to England with only ten pounds in her pocket (11: Risk Addiction). The gamble paid off, and she began writing newspaper columns for The Sun.

 

She began travelling to Dublin, and became friends with George Russell, the editor of The Irish Statesman. He became her mentor, and introduced her to a wide variety of accomplished writers, including Yeats (4: Supportive Someone). During her visits to Ireland she became exposed to various forms of astrology and mysticism; she also became an acolyte of the spiritual teacher George Gurdjieff (3: Belief in the Unbelievable).

 

In 1934, while recuperating from pleurisy (a lung disease), she moved out of London and into a cottage in Sussex, where she entertained two visiting children with a story about a nanny with an umbrella and a carpetbag. The story turned into Mary Poppins, was illustrated by the daughter of the Winnie the Pooh artist, and was published in 1934. The Mary Poppins books published from 1934 through 1989 became wildly successful (7: Magnificent Obsession).  

 

She had an unfortunately turbulent love life, and her lovers included a much older man, then an American bookshop owner, followed by an Irish poet (15: Forget About Prince Charming). As A broken-hearted 40 year old, she travelled to Killiney, Ireland where she was going to adopt a baby boy from a poor family. When she arrived she discovered there were twins, and on the advice of her astrologer she chose to adopt only one. Her new son's name was Camillus, but both his young years and adulthood were unhappy.

 

Travers was constantly able to change homes and locales during her life--to England, Ireland, New York, Arizona, Russia, Harvard, Japan, etc... (14: Selective Disassociation). Walt Disney's daughter fell in love with the book Mary Poppins, but it took him twenty years to persuade Travers to give him movie rights. She was notoriously difficult to work with, and made no secret about her dislike of everything connected with the movie. Richard Sherman who over a two and a half year period co-wrote the musical score for the movie told an interviewer, "She didn't care about our feelings, how she chopped us apart." She hated all the music, including Chim Chim Cheree, A Spoonful Of Sugar and Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious (5: Life Is Not A Popularity Contest). In spite of her disdain, Mr. Sherman and his brother won two Academy Awards for their work on Mary Poppins.  Julie Andrews  also won an Oscar.

 

Even though  her life was full of adventure and success, she definitely suffered. She told an interviewer that "Mary Poppins is the story of my life...Sorrow lies like a heartbeat behind everything I have written." She and Disney fought so bitterly that she wasn't even invited to the Mary Poppins premier. She begged for an invitation, but spent her time at the 1964 screening crying with her gloved hands clenched into fists (12: Hard Times).

 

All in all, Travers wrote 21 books, and died in 1996 (she was 96) from an epileptic seizure.

 

Looking forward to your comments...

203: The Self-Empowered Woman: Whoopi Goldberg/Moms Mabley

Dear Followers,

I don't know how many of you watched Whoopi Goldberg's amazing HBO special on Moms Mabley, but it was a real eye opener. Mabley was the first successful female comedian, and she paved the way for women to be both financially secure and funny. So today's blog will take a brief look at both of these talented women.

 Whoopi Goldberg's real name is Caryn Elaine Johnston, and she and I both share a November 13th birthday. Some records indicate that she was born in 1949, while others say her birth year is 1955. Her mother was a nurse and a teacher whom Whoopi has described as "stern, strong and wise." Her father was a clergyman, but left the family, which meant that Whoopi was raised by a single mother (1: No Paternal Safety Net). 

When her career was in its early stages, she was trained by acting teacher Uta Hagen, and later she was "discovered" by director Steven Speilberg (4: Supportive Someone). During her varied and impressive career she has earned a reputation for creating controversy--especially when it comes to gender, personality or political issues (5: Life Is Not A Popularity Contest).

Whoopi has had a bumpy love life--with three divorces and two high-profile romances--Ted Dansen and Frank Langella (15: Forget About Prince Charming). When she was 18 years old, she and her then-husband had a daughter (Alexandrea), and Whoopi became a grandmother at the age of 34, when her first granddaughter arrived on her November 13th birthday. She has three grandchildren, and has always lived near them (16: Intensive Motherhood).

Whoopi's amazing career has involved almost every aspect of popular entertainment, and she is one of only a handful of entertainers to have won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony award. In 1993, when she made Sister Act 2, she was one of Hollywood's highest paid movie actresses (13: More Than Meets The Eye). These days, she is best known for her appearances on The View.

Goldberg is the first African American actress to have received Academy Award nominations for both "best" and "best supporting roles." She has continually pushed herself to excel in almost every aspect of her life from activism (comic relief, LGBT, acting, directing, producing and writing) (10: The Critic Within). Since the age of eleven--When she was supposed to go see The Nutcracker, but she went exploring instead (11: Risk Taking).

Now here's some information about Moms Mabley, who was born in 1897 and died in 1975.  She was a star at Harlem's Apollo Theater, and also appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show and the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.  She was born in North Carolina, had 15 siblings, and her father--who was a volunteer fireman--died when a fire engine exploded when she was only eleven years old (1: No Paternal Safety Net).  When she was 18, her mother was run over by a truck while returning home from church on Christmas day.

By the time she was 14 years old, she had been raped twice and had two children who were given up for adoption (12: Hard Times).  When she was 27, and working as a comedian on the Chitlin' Circuit of African-American vaudeville, she came out as a lesbian and wore male clothing (11: Risk Addiction). 

Her brother, Eddie Parton, helped her polish her routine and become more popular (4: Supportive Someone).  At her most successful, she was making $10,000 a week, and recorded more than 20 albums of comedy routines.  She became famous for her stage persona--where she wore a baggy house dress, a floppy hat, and removed her false teeth (6: Life Is Not A Beauty Contest).

When she was 75 years old, Moms Mabley became the oldest person to ever have a U.S. top 40 hit with her recording of "Abraham, Martin and John" (13: More Than Meets The Eye).  She died in 1975, and is credited as being the first successful female American stand up comic.

Looking forward to your comments...

202: The Self-Empowered Woman: S. Josephine Baker

Dear Followers,

 

When most of us hear the name "Josephine Baker" we think of the exotic cabaret dancer who set Paris on fire decades ago. But I'd like to introduce you to S. Josephine Baker, who changed the face of public health medicine. Born on November 15th, 1873, to a wealthy Quaker family (3: Belief In The Unbelievable), as a young teenager she had planned to accept a scholarship to attend Vassar. But when she was 16, both her brother and her father died of typhoid (1: No Paternal Safety Net), and she decided to pursue a career in medicine (2: An Early Sense of Direction).  

 

Her family did not support her decision to become a physician (17: Dreaming Your Own Dream), but in spite of their skepticism about female doctors, she enrolled in the Woman's Medical College of the New York Infirmary in 1894. This school had been founded by America's first female doctor, Elizabeth Blackwell, and Baker was able to meet other inspiring women doctors. After her graduation in 1898, she interned at the New England Hospital for Women and Children in Boston. That is where she first understood the connection between poverty and poor health, which became her life-long passion (7: Magnificent Obsession).

 

In 1899, she opened a private practice in New York City, and also worked as a medical examiner for the New York Life Insurance Company. She also worked part-time as a medical inspector for New York City, and by 1907, was made assistant commissioner of health. Dealing with small pox vaccination was part of her responsibility during this time, and she had a major role in identifying "Typhoid Mary," a cook who had unknowingly spread typhoid throughout the city.

 

In 1908, Baker was appointed director of the new Bureau of Child Hygiene, where she developed important public health programs. She started the Little Mothers League, which was a program that helped siblings care for younger brothers and sisters so that mothers could go to work and help support their families. In 1917, she told an interviewer that babies born in The United States faced a higher mortality rate (12%) than American soldiers fighting in French trenches in World War I (2%). During that time 1,500 babies routinely died of diarrhea every week during the summer. That same year she became the first woman to earn a doctorate in public health from NYU (13: More Than Meets The Eye).

 

Baker met with a great deal of resistance, and at one point several dozen Brooklyn doctors petitioned the mayor to shut down her agency. But she was widely credited with saving the lives of 90,000 inner-city children, and soon other cities began to follow her suggestions. By the time she retired from city government (in 1923), all 48 states had a bureau of child health patterned after Baker's (8: Turning No Into Yes).

 

Baker was the driving force behind helping educate inner-city immigrants, distributing formula to infants and milk to children, preventing gonorrhea-created infant blindness, licensing midwives, and placing nurses in schools. Because so many male doctors were hostile (5: Life Is Not A Popularity Contest) to both Baker and her work (she was in charge of supervising a staff that included many dismissive male doctors), she eventually went out of her way to wear clothes that minimized her femininity.

 

Baker died in 1945, and if you'd like to learn more about her contributions to the world of public health, Fighting for Life (her autobiography, originally published in 1939) has just been reissued by New York Review Books.         

 

Looking forward to your comments...

201: The Self-Empowered Woman: Marin Alsop

Dear Followers,

Since September 2007, Marin Alsop has been the 12th music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, which is notable because she is the first woman ever to hold this position with a major American orchestra. Her tenure has been so successful that her contract has been extended through the 2020-2021 season. In 2005, she became the first conductor to ever receive a MacArthur Fellowship "genius grant."

She was born on October 16th, 1956, in New York City to parents who were professional musicians, and began studying the violin when she was a toddler. Her first exposure to sexism came when she was only nine years old, and her father took her to a Young People's Concert that was conducted Leonard Bernstein. She told her parents "That's what I want to be!" (2: An Early Sense of Direction) and they were supportive, but her violin teacher said, "Girls don't do that." Alsop's mother not only insisted that Marin could be anything she wanted to be, she even bought a box full of batons for her daughter the very next day.

Alsop earned her Master's degree in violin from Juilliard, but still dreamt of becoming a conductor (7: Magnificent Obsession). Carl Bamberger, a renowned conductor and music teacher became a mentor as did Leonard Bernstein (4: Supportive Someone),  and in 1984, her orchestra (The Concordia) had it's first concert in New York's Symphony Space. When she took part in a forum on creative leadership at George Washington University, she told students, "Pound and pound and pound at the front door, and while no one's looking, just walk around the side and climb in the window. That's sort of what I did."

A great deal of controversy surrounded her selection as music director of the Baltimore Symphony because many members of the orchestra questioned her abilities (13: More Than Meets The Eye). It was a humiliating situation, but Marin insisted on meeting with the orchestra so she could tell them about her plan and vision. The musicians told her, "You have 110 percent of our support," and after her first performance with them (in September, 2007), the crowd gave her a standing ovations both before and after the orchestra's performance (8: Turning No Into Yes). She has been the music director of the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music in Santa Cruz, California since 1992, as well as the principal conductor of the Sao Paolo State Symphony Orchestra.

Marin prides herself on "reinventing" things that are ready for change, including her maestra's jacket. She insisted that her black jacket and trousers be different than those traditionally worn by (male) conductors, and against the advice of others her suits now have "flashes of crimson silk at the collar and cuffs." She has also been criticized for choosing dissonant music that many attendees at Baltimore's Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall find irritating (5: Life is Not A Popularity Contest).

Marin has almost made a habit of taking chances. From creating CSI-inspired concerts to donating 20 percent of her MacArthur prize money to help fund Baltimore's OrchKids children's music program, to sponsoring BSO Academy, which allows fans to sit with the orchestra during rehearsals, eat lunch with the musicians, and attend master classes, she is not afraid to break barriers (11: Risk Addiction).

Marin and her partner, horn player Kristin Jurkscheit, have a ten year old son, Auden, and when asked recently what her "dream life" would look like, she answered, "Aren't I living it now?"

Looking forward to your comments...










 

200: The Self-Empowered Woman: Diana Nyad

Dear Followers,

 

First of all, let me thank all of you for supporting this blog so enthusiastically--this is my 200th posting, and I'm sure that I will never run out of interesting stories about amazing women! 

 

Today, I'd like to celebrate 64 year old marathon swimmer Diana Nyad, who became--after four failed attempts--the first person to ever swim from Cuba to Key West, Florida.  Her father was a stockbroker who died when she was an infant (1: No Paternal Safety Net).  When her mother remarried, Aristotle Nyad adopted her, became her stepfather, and told her that Nyad--in Greek--meant that she would conquer the sea.

 

The family moved from New York City to Fort Lauderdale, Florida and she began swimming seriously in the seventh grade (2: An Early Sense of Direction).  She won three Florida State high school championships in the backstroke, and dreamed of swimming in the 1968 Summer Olympics.  But in 1966, she was forced to spend three months in bed with endocarditis, an infection of the heart.  By the time she was able to start swimming again she had lost her championship speed (12: Hard Times).

 

She entered Emory University, but was expelled for jumping out of a 4th-floor dormitory window while wearing a parachute (11: Risk Addiction).  She then transferred to Lake Forest College in Illinois, where she majored in English and French, played on the tennis team, resumed (distance) swimming, and graduated in 1973.

 

Buck Dawson, who directed the International Swimming Hall of Fame in Florida introduced her to marathon swimming (4: Supportive Someone) and she set a women's world record (four hours and 22 minutes) in her first event (8: Turning No into Yes).  In June 1974, she set a women's record of eight hours 22 minutes in the 22 mile Bay of Naples Race, and the next year (when she was 26) she swam 28 miles around the Island of Manhattan in just under eight hours.  Her first attempt to swim from Havana to Key West (in 1978) was in a shark cage, but ended after 42 hours and 76 miles.  In 1978, she was an honoree of the International Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame.  In 1979, on her 30th birthday, she set a world record for distance swimming by swimming 102 miles from North Bimini Island, Bahamas to Juno Beach, Florida.  It took her 27 and one-half hours.  She then stopped swimming (14: Selective Disassociation) completely for 30 years.

 

She then began working as a successful sports broadcaster (NPR and CBS) and journalist (Newsweek and The New York Times), and earned over $10,000 for her motivational talks (13: More Than Meets the Eye).  After her mother's death, Nyad couldn't stop thinking about the Cuba to Florida swim, and began training in the Caribbean.  Her August, 2011, September, 2011 and August, 2012 attempts all failed due to asthma, strong currents or dangerous jellyfish stings (7: Magnificent Obsession).  While swimming, she has a mental soundtrack of songs that she sings to herself over and over again (9: Music).

 

To get a better feel of Diane Nyad's personality, watch her two-part interview with Oprah on "Super Soul Sunday" or her TED lecture.  And a Showtime Channel special, "The Other Shore" will be broadcast the first week of November.

 

 

Looking forward to your comments...