Women's History Month on March, 2024: Women's History Month?

March, 2024 is Women's History Month 2024. 14 Fierce Women Celebrate Women's History Month With These Women's Rights Advocates

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Women’s History Month?

Okay, I'm normally against these sorts of things, but there's potential to do something with it anyhow.

Very few people know about scientists, mathematicians, and engineers. Part of it's due to the esoteric nature of their work making it just about impossible for those uneducated in the subject to appreciate the implications of.

There have been some absolutely brilliant women. I was struck by the theories of one whose work came up in a project of mine several months back. Upon her death, Einstein himself was offended that the New York Times didn't make an article about her life that he wrote one and submitted as an editorial (which, since he's Einstein, they featured).

I'm absolutely horrible with names (I can't even remember my coworkers' sometimes), yet someone else can probably name her:

-I think she was born in Germany. She had a professorship there before the Nazi's came to power.

-Moved to America at some point. I think she had Jewish blood in her, so the Nazi's forced her to leave.

-Mathematician. (I'm tempted to say in Abstract, but I'm really not sure about that right now.)

-The editorial thing from Einstein when she died in the NY Times.

I’m writing a play for Women’s History month and I need advice?

I'm writing a play for Women's History month and I need advice?

Well, you could do a play about the early women's rights movement in America. That includes some remarkable personalities, like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott, Lucy Stone, Sojourner Truth etc. Wonderful colourful women.

Or another subject might be women and abolition, which would include people like the remarkable Grimke sisters, the first female anti-slavery lecturers in the USA, and Lydia Maria Child, who wrote a book called An Appeal In Favour Of That Class of Americans Called Africans, in 1833. And there was the tenacious Prudence Crandall, who started a school for black girls in Canterbury, Connecticut, in 1831, so that black girls could become teachers. What she and her pupils endured would make an exciting play. And of course there was Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose novel 'Uncle tom's Cabin' was enormously influential in the anti-slavery movement. and there was Maria Weston Chapman who organised anti-slavery fairs and once said, when an angry mob besiged a mixed race anti-slavery meeting in Boston "If this be the last bulwark of freedom, we may as well die here as anywhere." And of course the remarkable Harriet Tubman, who rescued hundreds of slaves from bondage in the South.

Or you might do a play about the Temperence movement in the late 19th century perhaps. That includes some remarkable personalities too, like Frances Willard, who was president of the Women'sChristian Temperence Union, and the extraordinary Carrie Nationa, who went around smashing up saloons.

Or what about women of the Revolutionary War? There were some great personalities around then, like Abigail Adams, who wrote to her husband John, while she was holding down the fort at the family farm in Massachussetts "We are in no way dispirted here. If our men are all drawn off and we should be attacked, you would find a Race of Amazons in America." And there were women like Deborah Sampson, who disguised herself as a man to fight in the war, and women who followed their husbands to the battlefield and sometimes replaced them in the line when they fell. Margaret Corbin stepped in for her dead husband at the Battle of Fort Washington and was severely wounded, losing the use of one arm. She was later awarded a military pension and was buried at the West Point Cemetery. And then there is the anonymous woman who set fire to New York to protect the retreating Americans. The female rebel, according to Edmund Burke, had been found in a cellar "with her visage besmeared and smutted over, with every mark of rage, despair, resolution and the most exalted heroism, buried in the ashes - she wasbrought forth, and knowing she would be condemend to die, upon being asked her purpose, said "to fire the city!" and was determined to omit no opportunity for doing what her country called for." In Massachusetts, a group of women disguised in their husbands' clothing intercepted a Tory captain en route for Boston, took the important papers he was carrying, and escorted him to the Groton jail. Emily Geiger, an 18-year-old girl carried a vital message from General Greene to Sumter in South Carolina. When she was captured on route by Tories they locke dher in a guardhouse and sent for a Tory matron to search her. Emily quickly memorised Greene's note to General Sumter, and then ate it. Finding no incriminating evidence, the British scouts released her, and she continued on her journey and safely delivered her message to General Sumter. Deborah Champion made a long and dangerous ride from New London to Boston to deliver key intelligence to General Washington.

The Civil War is another era that produced a crop of remarkably interesting women. For instance there was Dorothea Dix, superintendent of nurses for the Union Army. clara Barton, who delviered vital supplies to soldiers on the battlefield, and nursed and assisted at operations on the field. Another remarkable women who nursed soldiers was Mary Ann 'Mother' bickerdyke, who arrived to deliver a releif fund, and seeing the conditions in the filthy, overcrowded hospital tents, got to work cleaning and nursing without asking anyone's permission. She was famous for ordering everyone around, and her reputation gave her the clout to get away with it. An army surgeon who challenged one of her orders was told "Mother Bickerdyke outranks everybody, even Lincoln." Mary Walker, an army surgeon for the Union Army, was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honour for her bravery under fire at Gettysburg and other battles. There were women spies like 'Rebel Rose' Greenhow and Belle Boyd, who both spied for the Confederate Army. Harriet Tubman, the former conductor of the Underground Railway, worked as a spy and a scout for the Union Army. Some women disguised themselves as men to fight in the war, like Loreta Velasquez, who fought for the confederate Army, and Sarah Emma Edmonds, who fought under the name of 'Frank Thompson' for the Union Army.

These are some of my favourite women from American history, but there are many more, it's such a wide field to pick from.

How do you feel about Women’s History Month?

How do you feel about Women's History Month?

What an interesting question. Also, what an insolvent one.

I would like to think you might suggest why I say this. In any case --

If one enjoyed the lion share in practice as have white people for the past 500 plus years in the Americas alone, then that same host should be known bewildered that some mere 30 days of commemorations each year should pose a massive tear in the intellectual Fabric of the nation.

Likewise, if one enjoyed some 6,000 years of prowess as men have, only to feel trumped by a mere 30-day acknowledgement of women's plights each year, then, well, what can we say about our world?

I believe legacy is something we all need to bear close witnesses to, for legacy made many a condition today what it is. White people today are not yesteryear's slave masters; and black people today are not yesteryear's slaves. But each has inherited its respective legacy... One need only peruse and compare the GDP of each of these two groups 140 years ago to that of today's to see the point I dare convey.

But, now, consider this one great reality: in many a region of the world today, women are still defacto slaves -- strike that -- extant slaves; victims of untold debaucheries and unheard-of wrongs -- this, in Africa, in the Middle East. Tradition is one thing, and evil another.

So, I say, as long as there are sufficient squares in our noble little calendars left to fill, then allow that these squares be amended liberally so and to that affect each: have as many commemorations as fancied warranted. These things afford people construction of now and the future and dissolution of a most backward past. There is little if anything to be lost by acknowledging them and in truth so very much to gain.

Ahh....need anyone have a daughter or a son for whom one parent is black, before the needed enlightenment finally drives home an apt state of merit. [For not few people in this country -- I won't say who these are -- to have a grandchild whose mom or dad is black is the worst nightmare; let us be honest about this]

Therefore, I say, the rest is mental masturbation on the parts of dogmatists and parochial little people or worst, on the parts of bigots.

Also on this date Friday, March 1, 2024...