Welcome to the witchy, bitchy month of October! Witchy? Yes. In the U.S., the lead-up to Halloween is huge business-wise and excitement-wise for the young and young at heart. But witches are often considered to be female and bad. This “women = X is bad” must be rejected. There is so much women’s history and information embedded in the concept of the month and I want to change how we conceptualize the month to the rich tones of the marigold and the opalescent richness and layers of the birthstone.
If you are just here for timely, women-related blogging prompts, you may jump down to October Women’s Political Connections.
The October flower is the marigold.
The gemstone of the month of October is opal.
In October a noticeable shift of light elongates rays in the Northern Hemisphere.
October light takes on a golden hue whenever I remember Harvest’s past. Call it Fall, Autumn, or Harvest what was begun in September develops in October.
The Time of Seasons
There are many kinds of seasons including calendrical, cultural, and climatological. Solstice and equinox were up until recently my default criteria for talking about seasons, but now I tend to view the seasons as centering on these celestial linked dates and beginning and ending at times that our culture no longer recognizes but which are clearly evident in more traditional, folk, or ancient ways of knowing such as the Northern European one shown here:
We celebrate the reprieve that autumn brings where I live, in Tucson, in the way that spring is celebrated in more northern climes.
INDIVIDUAL VIEW OF SEASONS
It is okay to talk about the weather or the seasons. Just make it personal. For me, October is the most evocative of months.
In the early years of my life, fall was the time of harvest, the hunter’s moon, seasonal depression, the start of the time of year when Mom had time to focus on me (which often was not a good thing,) birthdays of close friends, lovers and elders. The stark, almost bleak sense of stasis or dormancy, of waiting for the months of October and November. These months seemed like a pencil-retouched photograph from the late 1800s, all shades of black and gray with soft touches of unreal color.
But these last many years, since moving to Tucson, Fall has become Autumn. Autumn in Tucson is a time of wonder: perfect days to play hooky and warm oneself on a granite rock ledge in Sabina Canyon as hints of coming coolness whisper in the breeze, preparation for late and winter gardens, evenings spent outdoors on patios with sunsets, friends and perfect weather. Preparation for the All Souls Procession alters the angle of perspective of the season in that unique way only Tucson can.
Every four years October turns into a media slam of nonstop nasty politics. If you would like to fill your brain or your blog or your social media with politically informed content but do not want to engage in the sordid fray that is contemporary politics, toss in some conversation about any of these amazing women who have October connections.
OCTOBER WOMEN’S POLITICAL CONNECTIONS
October 2
Born in 1912 (1980) – Alice Bourneuf, an economist, had charge of the work on the United Kingdom and Scandinavia in connection with the Overseas European Economic Community and NATO in the Marshall Plan to Europe after World War II. Educated at Radcliffe, she also worked for the IMF, and the Federal Reserve, and was a Professor at UC Berkeley forjoining the Economics faculty at Boston College (1959-77).
October 4
1993 – Ruth Bader Ginsburg sworn in to the U.S. Supreme Court as its second woman Justice. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, is known in popular women’s culture as “The Notorious RBG” a spoof on a rapper star and tribute to her toughness.
Born in 1908 (1995) – Eleanor Flexner, influential author and historian, wrote Century of Struggle: The Women’s Rights Movement in the United States (1950) and Mary Wollstonecraft: A Biography (1972)
1976 – Barbara Walters becomes the first woman co-anchor of the evening news (at ABC)
October 5
Born 1959 – Maya Lin, artist and architect of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington D.C. (1980-82) and other public sculptures, author of Boundaries (2000)
October 6
Born 1914 (1997) – Mary Louise Smith, Republican Party committeewoman and chair (1974-77), supporter of ERA and pro-choice
Born 1917 (1977) – Fannie Lou Hamer, civil rights leader and voting rights crusader, helped organize the Mississippi Freedom Summer (1964)
October 7
Born 1920 (1994) – Kathryn Clarenback, founding member of the National Organization for Women, executive director of the National Committee on the Observance of International Women’s Year (1977)
October 9
1823 (1893) – Mary Shadd Cary, first black woman editor in North America, “Provincial Freeman” (1853) in Windsor, Canada, helped black freed slaves know their rights
October 11
1884 (1962) – Birthday of former First Lady (1933-45) Eleanor Roosevelt, civil rights advocate, feminist, author, world diplomat
October 164
1895 (1989) – Marguerite Rawalt, lawyer, president of the National Federation of Business and Professional Women (1954-56), supporter of the ERA and entire feminist agenda, particularly including the word “sex” in Title VII of Civil Rights Act of 1964
1916 – Margaret Sanger opens the U.S.’s first birth control clinic in Brooklyn, New York
October 17
1943 – Vilma Socorro Martinez, lawyer, first female U.S. Ambassador to Argentina (2009), civil rights crusader, one of first women on the board of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund
October 18
1890 (1986) – Pauline Newman, labor leader who emigrated from Lithuania (1901), aided uprising of the 20,000 in New York, hailed by Coalition of Labor Union Women as a foremother of the liberation movement
October 22
1834 (1915) – Abigail Scott Duniway, early western author and Pacific Northwest suffrage leader, (1871-1915), succeeded in winning woman suffrage in Oregon (1912), wrote Path Breaking (1914)
1919 – Doris Lessing, author, born in Iran, Nobel Laureate in 2007
October 23
1911 (1999) – Martha Rountree, creator and first moderator (1945-54) of televised show of unrehearsed panel interviews, “Meet the Press”
October 24
1830 (1917) – Belva Lockwood, attorney, first woman admitted to practice law before Supreme Court (1879), ran for U.S. President in 1884 and 1888
1896 (1994) – Marjorie Joyner, helped develop and manage more than 200 Madam C. J. Walker beauty schools by 1919, added professional status to the occupation, worked with Eleanor Roosevelt and other leaders in civil rights struggles
October 26
1911 (1972) – Mahalia Jackson, acclaimed gospel singer brought Gospel to mainstream America. Sang at the 1963 March on Washington
1947 – Hillary Clinton, U.S. Secretary of State (2009-13), Senator from New York (2001-09), former First Lady (1993-2001), First female candidate by a major political party for President of the United States. Lifelong activist for the rights of women and children.
October 28
1842 (1932) – Anna Dickinson, orator, early champion of the rights of women and blacks, supported interracial marriage, attacked the double standard of morality, and was the first woman to address the United States Congress
October 31
1860 (1927) – Juliette Low, founder and first president of the Girl Scouts of the U.S.A built an organization that continues to create women leaders as shown by the number of female political leaders who were members as a young woman. (58% of women in the 114th Congress are Girl Scout alumnae. 75% of female Senators are GS Alumnae. 53% of female members of the House of Representatives are GS Alumnae. 5 0f the 6 women governors were in Girl Scouts. Every female Secretary of State of the United States has been a Girl Scout.)
WOMEN WRITING
October 8
1993 – Toni Morrison becomes the first African American woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Read a more recent article here.
October 12
1908 (1997) – Ann Petry, reporter for African-American newspapers in 1930s, wrote The Street, first African-American novel to sell more than a million copies (1946)
October 14
1893 (1993) – Lillian Gish,vearly silent film star, from one-reelers like “An Unseen Enemy” (1912) to “The Whales of August” (1987), wrote Lillian Gish, the Movies, Mr. Griffith, and Me (1969)
October 22
1834 (1915) – Abigail Scott Duniway, early western author and Pacific Northwest suffrage leader, (1871-1915), succeeded in winning woman suffrage in Oregon (1912), wrote Path Breaking (1914)
1919 – (2013) Doris Lessing, author, born in Iran, was a Nobel Laureate in 2007. Her British parents moved to Southern Rhodesia when their children were young. Enthralled with communism in her early adulthood, she abandoned the political movement by the 1950s, but maintained her social conscious writings throughout her life.
October 24
1915 (1976) – Letitia Woods Brown, pioneer in researching and teaching African-American history, completed Ph.D. at Harvard in 1966, primary consultant for the Schlesinger Library’s Black Women Oral History Project, co-authored Washington from Banneker to Douglass 1791-1870 and Brown and her husband trained the first group of volunteers for the Peace Corps for a 1961 deployment to Ghana
1923 (1997) – Denise Levertov, poet, was a nurse in WWII in England, the country of her birth. She married an American and became an American poet. Humanist, peace-loving, egalitarian, her work was organic and reflected her belief in her own work, her message and meaning, being more important than any critic’s reading
October 27
1940 – Maxine Hong Kingston, award-winning author of The Woman Warrior, an autobiography about the Chinese-American female experience
October 31
1896 (1977) – Ethel Waters, singer, recorded more than 250 songs after her debut in the early 1920s. She was an unsurpassed vocalist and stylist with perfect pitch. In 1938, she gave a recital at Carnegie Hall. and then began to appear in dramatic roles. She went on to perform in more than ten films along with a treasure trove of classic songs including Am I Blue?, Memories of You, Stormy Weather, Porgy, Georgia on My Mind, and I Can’t Give You Anything but Love. She also authored two successful autobiographies: His Eye is on the Sparrow and To Me It’s Wonderful.
WOMEN IN SCIENCE
October 10
1983 – Dr. Barbara McClintock receives the Nobel Prize for Medicine for her discovery in genetics about mobile genetic elements
October 11
1984 – Dr. Kathryn D. Sullivan is the first U.S. woman astronaut to “walk” in space during Challenger flight
THE MUSICAL WOMAN OF THE MONTH
And for our musical memory, let us remember the phenomenal talent that shaped the backdrop to many of our youths: Laura Nero, who was born on October 18, 1947; ovarian cancer stole her from us when she was not yet 50.
Watch her induction into the rock and roll hall of fame:
For more chronicles of women’s history go to http://www.nwhp.org/