by Su Swanne A few years back, as I was growing up emotionally, I read the book Motherless Daughters by Hope Edelman. This book provided so much understanding about how my mother was shaped by the lack of a mother, and therefore, how my own life was influenced by her losses. March 2016 is Women’s […]
Elaine Danforth Harmon, WWII pilot
During World War II, the United States relied heavily on air support for military operations around the world. These operations included not only overseas fighting missions, but also domestic operations like ferrying planes from factories to bases, testing new planes, training other pilots, moving cargo around the nation, and towing targets for ground anti-aircraft fire […]
A Life of Grace and Focus – Great Aunt Carrie
by Arlene Valentine They were a powerful triad in my life……my grandmother Sarah and her two sisters, Rita and Carrie. As the oldest child in a very poor farm family in a hill town on the shore of the Adriatic Sea in Italy, by the time she was eight years old Carrie was in charge […]
Mrs. Snellback
by Irene McHugh Time traveling to 1982: I entered Mrs. Snellback’s 6th grade reading and writing classroom at Lincoln Elementary School in Wyckoff, NJ. An imposing figure who took her teaching seriously, she clearly put up with no sass. For anyone who smarted off to her or another student, she assigned the dreaded 500 word […]
The Rooster in My Kitchen
by Mithra Ballesteros In a small corner of my kitchen hangs this framed needlepoint rooster, one of my most beloved possessions. My Persian grandmother stitched it when she was a young girl living in Hamadan, Iran, probably sometime in the 1920s. Her name was Zarrin and she was very talented with a needle. After her […]
Why Her Story?
There is a reason I use the word history, and not herstory, as might be predicted by my role as a feminist. I grew up in a time and in circumstances where I could not grow to be anything but a self-declared feminist. However, in many ways I am a traditionalist, though a quite progressive one. I love change, […]