05-29 TABLE of CONTENTS: The first all-woman town council DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and EVENTS QUOTE by Sandra Day O'Connor, Harry J. Rathbun, Jeanne Coyne and Louis Otto-Peters. The first all-woman town council Slipped in with all the chamber of commerce stuff on the web page of the city of Kanab in southwestern Utah is the tale of the first all-woman town council in the HIStory of Utah and perhaps the United States.       In a fanciful article by Barbara Pyles, she writes that sand was hub deep the last 15 miles of the road leading into Kanab when men were chawin' in disbelief over the vote in a cow town on the Utah-Arizona border.       "It was 1911 and the town of about 900 people had just elected an all-women town council." It started as a prank, but no one else ran so Mary Woolley Chamberlain, Luella Atkin McAllister, Tamar Stewart Hamblin, Blanche Robinson Hamblin, and Ada Pratt Seegmiller were elected.       The woman council licensed peddlers and traveling merchants, built a dike above the town to protect homes from the floods, instituted a board of health, forbade horses and other animals from running loose, ordered all dogs to be registered by a certain date or be killed, and bridged irrigation ditches where they intersected sidewalks.       Mayor Chamberlain, the fifth wife in a polygamous family, and who had served as the first woman county clerk in the state of Utah in 1896 said, "Our greatest trouble has been in fighting the liquor evil, a terror in our town (even though members of the Mormon church were forbidden the use of spirits)."       On January 2, 1914, they turned the government back to the men, except for Ada Seegmiller who won reelection and then resigned. http://www.xpressweb.com/vacationguide/womencouncil.html | PRIOR DATE |        | HOME |       | WOA INDEX |       | NEXT DATE |   | RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE | 05-29 DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and EVENTS B. 05-29-1627, Anne Marie Louise d'Orleans, duchesse de Montpoensier, took charge of the troops to relieve Orleans and opened the gates of Paris to Louis II in 1652. She was exiled twice, once for her military actions and second for not marrying King Alfonso VI of Portugal. B. 05-29-1830, Louise Michel, French anarchist and teacher jailed twice for her political activism, once for fighting in the Paris Commune insurrection and the second time for inciting a riot during her extensive lecture tours. Her Mèmoires reveal a deep-seated compassion for the downtrodden. B. 05-29-1873, Elizabeth Cutter Morrow, acting president of Smith College 1939-40, who resigned to bow to the demands of her husband's career when he was appointed U.S. ambassador to Mexico. B. 05-29-1892, Alfonsina Storni, European-born Argentin(ian) poet, one of the most honored in South America. An amazingly complex and sad life, she had to go to work early in life and then committed suicide because of failing health. Her best known work is La inquietud del rosal (1916). B. 05-29-1894, Beatrice Lillie - British actor and singer who was the embodiment of sophisticated comedy star. Her mother was a concert singer. B. 05-29-1912, Iris Adrian - U.S. character actor who made more than 100 films, mostly portraying wise-cracking blondes. Event 05-29-1912: Curtis Publishing, publishers of the Ladies Home Journal fires 15 women for dancing the "Turkey Trot" on their lunch hour. The magazine would not have a woman editor until the 1970s. B. 05-29-1956, Kathy Marie Augustine was elected to the Nevada state legislature 1992-94 and to the state senate 1995-. B. 05-29-1961 Melissa Etheridge, throaty American rock singer and composer whose singles and albums topped the charts several times. Breaking two major rules, she - a woman! - produced her own albums and then she openly declared her lesbianism in the album Yes I Am (1993). It went platinum, the same as her others. After an eight -year relationship with film editor Julie Cypher, (the actual birth mother), the two had a baby girl in 1997, Bailey Jean - an event that rated huge coverage in most of the news magazines. The second child, a boy, was hardly mentioned as unnewsworthy. | PRIOR DATE |        | HOME |       | WOA INDEX |       | NEXT DATE |   | RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE | QUOTES DU JOUR O'CONNOR, SANDRA DAY:      "The dilemma is this: If society does not recognize the fact that only woman can bear children, then 'equal treatment' ends up being unequal. On the other hand, if society recognizes pregnancy as requiring special solicitude, it is a slipperly slope back to the 'protectionist' legislation that barred women from the workplace ... I would hope that [the next] generation of attorneys will find new ways to balance family and professional responsibilities between men and women... in a way... that frees both women and men from traditional role llimitations."             -- U. S. Associate Supreme Court Justice, Sandra Day O'Connor. RATHBUN, HARRY J.:       "...Egocentric male dominance has brought our world to the brink of disaster... If the world's crisis is to be met sucessfully, the need is that woman shall be given, and shall take, her proper place. That place male domination has heretofore denied her. It is one of complete equality with the male of the species... In achieving this equality, not only must woman claim her place, but the male must make sure this is is accorded her. Together, they can make a new world."             -- Harry J. Rathbun, professor at Stanford University during U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's college years. COYNE, JEANNE:       "A wise old man and a wise old woman reach the came conclusion."             -- Jeanne Coyne, Supreme Court Justice of Oklahoma. How to solve the latchkey kid syndrome: 1. Stay at home mother who is there 24-hours a day 2. Revamp school hours and curriculum so that children are kept in the direct school environment for after-school sports, club and other activities so that their day actually ends at 6 p.m. when the mother would be returning home from work. 3. The Sandra Day O'Connor solution of hiring people to take her children directly from school to sports and other activities so that they came home at the same time their mother did. OTTO-PETERS, LOUIS:       "There are many dark and thorny crowns which God gives to children in this world, but the most painful that God in his anger has crowned a woman's head with is - genius."             -- Louis Otto-Peters in a poem to George Sand | PRIOR DATE |        | HOME |       | WOA INDEX |       | NEXT DATE |   | RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE |