11-17-94 Women of Achievement and Herstory

    Excuse me for adding a personal note.  I had the privilege

yesterday of meeting and exchanging a few words with Jane Alexander,

chair of the National Endowment for the Arts.  I've met a lot of theater

people and a lot of politicians from presidents of the U.S. on down

and...This woman IMPRESSED me.  

    Intelligent, straight-forward, erudite ... no wonder she was

confirmed unanimously by the U.S. Senate.  She is a strong believer in

the arts and the artistic freedom to express.  Jesse Helms and the

religious supremacists who are aiming to cut the Endowment off at the

knees may have a bigger battle on their hands than they may realize

with Ms. Alexander at the helm.  YES!

Anniversaries -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Event 11-17-1558, Elizabeth I, ascended the throne of England and

immediately settled the religious wars by siding with the protestant

moderates.  The daughter of beheaded Ann Boleyn, she had a brutal

childhood that included prison and the always threat of death as her

father, syphilis-infected Henry VIII, became more and more irrational as

he went through wife after wife trying to get a healthy male heir.

B. 11-17-1815, Eliza Wood Burhans Farnham, opposed women's political

rights because she thought it would lessen women's actual influence;

became superintendent of women at Sing Sing prison and made a

number of humanitarian changes. Her _Woman and Her Era_  espouses

the natural superiority of women over men and claimed the modern

social structure was based on the unconscious recognition by men that

women were not to work or live on a equal basis, but to occupy a

higher level to oversee the morality of life.

B. 11-17-1878, Grace Abbot, worked with immigrants at Jane Addams'

Hull House, and was innovative director of US Children's Bureau 1921-

34. 

Event 11-17-1975, the Supreme Court invalidates a Utah law that claims

a woman in her third trimester of pregnancy should be presumed

unable to work and therefor not eligible for unemployment benefits.

Event 11-17-1976, Dr. Rosalyn S. Yalow becomes the first woman to

receive the Albert Lasker prize for her research.  She would later be

awarded the Nobel Prize. She earned a PhD in nuclear physics and in

a partnership with Solomon Berson over a 20-year period developed a

method of precise measurement of substances in the blood

(radioimmunoassay) that earned them the Nobel and Lasker awards.

Quote du jour -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

    "I believe it would be a great loss to the community as well as to

women if talented women did not have children.  They should have at

least as many, if not more, children than less talented women. (I am)

concerned with the need for universities, industry and particularly

government to take the initiative in providing for expert high-quality

day-care for children."

    -- Rosalyn Yalow, Nobel Laureate and mother.

    At her acceptance speech for the 1977 Nobel Prize in Medicine in

Stockholm, Yalow said, "We still live in a world in which a significant

fraction  of people, including women, believe that a woman belongs and

wants to belong exclusively in the home; that a woman should not aspire

to achieve more than her male counterparts and particularly not more

than her husband....The world cannot afford the loss of the talents of

half its people if we are to solve the many problems which beset us."

    (I wrote Dr. Yalow recently and received a very nice note and an

autographed picture. She is 73 and still goes to work regularly

although she has been in poor health.  She says she is feeling better. 

A remarkable woman.)

 (C) 1994 Irene Stuber, PO Box 6185, Hot Springs National Park, AR

71902, irenestuber@delphi.com. Distribute verbatim copies freely with

copyright notice for non-profit use.