| 12-09 TABLE of CONTENTS:
A Season for Giving...
Katherine Zalenska
DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and
EVENTS
QUOTE by
Voltaraine de Cleyre.
You are Needed
We do not want to play Scrooge
at the expense of the traditional charity fund drives this Christmas.
However, we would like to see women add two groups
to our gift-giving list and perhaps give them priority: your local Battered
Women's Shelter and Rape Crisis Center.
This Yuletide season, when you see twinkling lights
and listen to ho-ho's on the street corners, remember screams in the night
that too often go unanswered by mainstream society - by those very ho-hoers,
if you will.
In your phone book there should be the post office
box and phone numbers of your local shelter - or call your police station
and ask for a woman detective. (The actual location of the shelters must
remain secret. Authorities cannot or will not protect them... and please
make sure the shelter is actually one for battered women and not fake ones
set up by religious rights who preach "obedience to your man so he
doesn't HAVE to beat you.")
Telephone the shelter to get information on how best
to donate money or for directions on ways you can donate food, toys, household
cleaning supplies, linens, clothes, diapers or anything - ANYTHING to help
the innocent victims of abuse.
The simplest items of living are needed because victims
of domestic violence are often forced to flee from their abusers without
anything except their injured and bleeding bodies, forced to leave everything
behind in order to save their lives and protect their children.
So when you see bright and cheery lights this Christmas,
think of bruised and beaten women - abused women and their children cowering
in fear - who are wondering why they cannot share in the season of "Peace
on Earth and Goodwill towards... men?"
Merry Christmas and Kwanzaa, Happy Hanukkah, Welcome
to the Returning Sun, or whatever your faith... just remember that without
the grace of the great goddess that unanswered scream in the night could
be yours.
Please help your sisters.
-- Irene Stuber
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Katharine Zalenska
While Katherine Zalenska
was still young, her Polish father was killed at the Katyn Wood massacre
in World War II and her mother deported to the Gobi Desert by the Germans.
Left alone in Poland with her sister, she worked as a courier for the Polish
underground taking messages throughout Poland and surrounding countries.
The girls fooled the Germans by acting like silly schoolgirls without a
thought in their heads. She was decorated twice.
Following the war she continued her nurse/doctor training
and in 1956 learned her mother was alive and living in England. After a
joyful reunion, she relocated to Nigeria to do medical work.
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12-09 DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and
EVENTS
B. 12-09-1895, (Isidora) Dolores Ibarruri (Gomez),
"La Passionaria," Spanish Communist leader, an impassioned
orator during the Spanish Civil War, she coined the Republican battle cry,
"They shall not pass!"
B. 12-09-1899, Leonie Fuller Adams, mystical
American poet, shared Bolinger Prize (1954) with Louise Bogan for Poems,
a Selection, (1954). Was instructor at Columbia University.
B. 12-09-1902, Margaret Hamilton, stage, screen
and TV actor with hundreds of credits but that one defining, perfect
role as the Wicked Witch of the West in Wizard of Oz (1939) will
last as long as film endures.
B. 12-09-1905, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Dame,
German soprano who performed in the major opera houses of the Western
world and is remembered especially for her mastery of the German lieder.
B. 12-09-1906, Admiral Grace Murray Hopper
developed the concept of automatic programming with a compiling system
using words instead of mathematical symbols. Also contributed to development
of COBOL. Ph.D. in mathematics. Worked on UNIVAC. Retired from U.S. Navy
in 1986 with rank of Rear Admiral.
B. 12-09-1906, Esther Eggersten Peterson was
appointed Assistant Secretary of Labor and director of the Women's
Bureau, the U.S. Department of Labor by President John Kennedy. Her first
involvement with the labor movement was when she saw girls who received
$1.32 for every dozen dresses they sewed square pockets on going on strike
when they were ordered to sew on heart-shaped pockets which took more time.
Was active in movements to educate working women who often had to drop
out of school very young.
Event 12-09-1907, Emily Perkins Bissell placed
on sale the first Christmas seals she had designed and printd out of
her own pocket to raise money for tuberculosis research.
B. 12-09-1950, Joan Armatrading, West Indies
singer and songwriter of excellent lyrics and melody lines.
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QUOTES DU JOUR
De CLEYRE, VOLTARAINE:
"Let
every woman ask herself: 'Why am I the slave of Man? Why is my brain said
not to be the equal of his brain? Why is my work not paid equally with
his? Why must my body be controlled by my husband? Why may he take my labor
in the household, giving me in exchange what he deems fit? Why may he take
my children from me? Will them away while yet unborn? Let every woman ask."
-- Voltaraine de Cleyre (1866-1912) written in 1890.
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