Senior Women Web

Author: SeniorWomenWeb

  • The Bowes Museum’s Treasures Includes Textiles … and a Silver Swan Automaton

    Editor’s Note: If you’re not able to visit the Museum there are virtual tours of each floor available online; a Handbook to the Museum (1893) can be read online.

    The Bowes Museum is a museum in Teesdale, part of the Durham Dales in Northeast  England. The magnificent building stands proud in the historic market town of Barnard Castle housing internationally significant collections of fine and decorative arts.

    Purpose built in the 19th century by John and Joséphine Bowes, the Museum has a wonderful story to tell.Bowes Museum and Gardens

    John Bowes was a successful businessman who travelled to Paris in 1847 to explore his interest in the arts. It was here he bought a theatre and met the Parisian actress Joséphine Coffin-Chevallier whom he married in 1852. Joséphine was a talented amateur painter who was interested in a whole range of art forms including paintings, ceramics, furniture and textiles. Soon the couple began to develop the idea of creating a world-class museum back in John’s ancestral home of Teesdale in order to introduce the wider world of art to the local people.

    The prospect was daunting; nothing had matched the scale, grandeur or location of this colossal proposal in their lifetime. Plans were meticulously scrutinised and painstakingly formed in order to give the North East a truly magnificent edifice, a home suitably fitting for all the precious treasures which would be contained within it.

    The Bowes’ enthusiasm was immeasurable as Joséphine laid the foundation stone in 1869. She said ‘I lay the bottom stone, and you, Mr. Bowes, will lay the top stone’. As the building grew, so did their collection and an astounding 15,000 objects were purchased between 1862 and1874.Silver Swan

    Suddenly the project was blighted when Josephine died in 1874. John’s motivation towards their lifelong achievement took an enormous blow and John virtually ceased collecting. Fortunately the building did continue, but John, like his late wife, never saw its completion. He died in 1885 and never did carry out Joséphine’s wish of laying the top stone.

    Despite the death of John and Joséphine, momentum for the project had reached such a scale that it continued under the leadership of Trustees and The Bowes Museum was finally opened to the public on 10th June 1892 and attracted nearly 63,000 visitors in its first year.

    John and Joséphine filled the museum with treasures, so much so that storage and display space comes with a very high premium. At every turn you can see important and precious works from all over Europe, and each piece has its own story to tell. However it is the 230 year-old Silver Swan that is the best-loved object in the museum. The Silver Swan is an English silver automaton, a unique attraction that was bought by the Bowes in 1872. The life size model is still in working order and is operated at the museum on a daily basis.

  • Dolores Huerta, Medal of Freedom Winner

    Editor’s Note: on May 29th 2012  President Obama Awarded a Medal of Freedom to Dolores Huerta. Susan Samuels Drake interviewed Ms. Huerta in 2000 for SeniorWomen.com.Dolores Huerta Foundation picture

    “I know the softer side of the woman. She’s the boss I’d go to some mornings before work. That was in 1973, when César, not with great wisdom, placed her as his Administrative Assistant (imagine that tigress caged behind a desk). Dolores’ tensions spilled over to me, at that time César’s secretary, who’d been running the office longer than she had.”

    “So several mornings before work I walked across the compound misnamed La Paz to catch her in the old hospital we used for a dorm. Peace was not a usual state for the union’s headquarters above California’s Central Valley in the Tehachapi Mountain. I would beg Dolores for patience, understanding or advice. She would wrestle with her hair and breakfast while tears ran down my cheeks. By the time I walked over to the office, I wasn’t sure whether I was crying from relief or from the amazing confidence she’d just instilled in me.”

    “Now I can scan the 1,000 sites on the Net that mention this friend, an idol in many American circles, an unknown in others. I already had her agree to an interview before I saw her picture with President Clinton on the front page of my local newspaper last December. He had just awarded her the Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Human Rights. On some of those Internet sites, I learned how she had spent those calendar-crammed years since we worked together.”

    “The first time I met Dolores, she had been fired by César the day before but there she was, working behind the counter of what was known as The Gray House. Gray House headquartered the National Farm Workers Association, as they were then known, housed organizers, a legal department, a boycott staff and a couple of rooms and garage office that made up the newspaper. No wonder grape growers thought we would disappear before labor contracts could be signed.”

    Read Susan Samuel’s Drake article, Dolores Huerta: A Role Model for Any Age

    http://www.seniorwomen.com/articles/articlesDrakeDolores.html

  • Weighing My Options and Exercising Choices: My Cirque du Soleil Moment

    by Roberta McReynolds

    Those extra pounds didn’t accumulate on my body overnight or without overindulgence on my part, although it sure seems like it happened that way. Any first-semester psychology student would accurately diagnose my mindless grazing at the buffet table as a case of being in a serious state of denial. That all ended the day I unexpectedly caught my reflection in a storefront window. Very odd indeed! It perplexed me how my head appeared to have somehow become attached on top of my mother’s body. No more blissful denial.chocolate treat

    I’ve dieted a few times in my lifetime, but it’s different now. Besides the uncomfortable realization that there are more pounds to lose now, a sluggish metabolism and aging body have teamed up to make my commitment to lose weight a painfully slow process. The numbers are at least going in the right direction for the first time in … well, let’s just say a long time and leave it at that.

    The fact that my husband and I decided enough is enough at the same time has undoubtedly been the best avenue to success. Past attempts to lose weight were dismal and short-lived. Either he was trying to diet and I wasn’t ready to stop my love affair with chocolate, or I was ready to change my lifestyle while he was munching potato chips.

    We’ve teamed up to work on portion control and be more ‘calorie conscious’. I think it’s safe to say I’ve been unconscious about what I’ve been eating and my emotional connection to food for quite some time. A helpful tool is the online calorie calculator we use to estimate what our daily intake should be, based on height, current weight, and activity level. I want to state for the record that I think it’s totally unfair that short people require far fewer calories than taller ones. That said, the good news is that after the first year Mike lost 27 pounds and I lost 23. I know it doesn’t sound as impressive as some commercials on television would lead you to believe is possible. I’ve tried to reconcile myself to the idea that if a quicker method sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

    Besides watching the numbers on the bathroom scale go down, the experience of needing to buy clothes in a smaller size was a bonus reward. I really needed some new pants, because I was at risk of looking like those teenaged boys who walk around with their pants sagging off their derrières. Before a mental image presents itself, you can rest assured that’s not a fashion statement I’m eager to emulate.

    Several months ago after I celebrated purchasing some new clothes, I hit one of those aggravating plateaus and got stuck at the same weight. My metabolism had adjusted to the lower caloric intake and I was no longer losing pounds. Since I can’t change my height (high heels don’t seem to count) and I’m not exactly fond of the idea of starvation, that left only one last component in the equation. It was time to start exercising.

    Like so many of our adventures, one story leads to another. Our stationary exercise bike had been located (‘stored’ might be a more accurate word) in Mike’s hobby room for years, where the ‘out of sight, out of mind’ syndrome became a factor for me. Mike wanted more space and if the bike were moved into the main house, there might be a greater likelihood that I would actually be inclined to use it.

    The short version is that we rearranged a portion of the living room and found a location for the bike next to the cat tree. Mike even installed a small ceiling fan to make the atmosphere more comfortable and inviting. Just to make this picture complete, our kitties both find it quite amusing to take turns perching on the top tier of the cat tree and so they can watch me pedal.

  • “An Element of Mystery”: The Golden Gate Bridge at 75

    The Golden Gate Suspension Bridge

    “Still, for the time being — and that time being could last for centuries — the Golden Gate Bridge remains a world icon. What does the Bridge mean, finally, after each of its engineering and architectural achievements is explored? At the case of all great art, there remains an element of mystery. Like a Bach fugue, or Beethoven’s Ninth, or a symphony by Mahler, the Golden Gate Bridge can be analyzed in terms of its parts and functions. In its final effect and meaning, however, the Bridge is more than the sum total of any of these. The Golden Gate Bridge embodies a beauty at once useful and transcendent. It emanates a music of mathematics and design and offers enduring proof that human beings can alter the planet with reverence, can mend or complete their environment for social purposes. The Bridge is a triumphant structure, a testimony to the creativity of mankind. At the same time, it also asserts the limits and brevity of human achievement in a cosmos that is as endless and ancient as time itself.”

    — Kevin Starr
    Golden Gate; The Life and Times of America’s Greatest Bridge

    Opening festivities, 50th, and 75th anniversaries

    The bridge-opening celebration began on May 27, 1937 and lasted for one week. The day before vehicle traffic was allowed, 200,000 people crossed by foot and roller skate. On  opening day, Mayor Angelo Rossi and other officials rode the ferry to Marin, then crossed the bridge in a motorcade past three ceremonial “barriers”, the last a blockade of beauty queens who required Joseph Strauss (chief engineer in charge of overall design and construction of the bridge project) to present the bridge to the Highway District before allowing him to pass. An official song, “There’s a Silver Moon on the Golden Gate“, was chosen to commemorate the event. Strauss wrote a poem that is now on the Golden Gate Bridge entitled “The Mighty Task is Done.” The next day, President Roosevelt pushed a button in Washington, DC signaling the official start of vehicle traffic over the Bridge at noon. When the celebration got out of hand, the SFPD had a small riot in the uptown Polk Gulch area. Weeks of civil and cultural activities called “the Fiesta” followed. A statue of Strauss was moved in 1955 to a site near the bridge.On the GG Bridge going North

    In May 1987, as part of the 50th anniversary celebration, the Golden Gate Bridge district again closed the bridge to automobile traffic and allowed pedestrians to cross the bridge. However, this celebration attracted 750,000 to 1,000,000 people, and ineffective crowd control meant the bridge became congested with roughly 300,000 people, causing the center span of the bridge to flatten out under the weight. Although the bridge is designed to flex in that way under heavy loads, and was estimated not to have exceeded 40% of the yielding stress of the suspension cables, bridge officials have stated that uncontrolled pedestrian access is not being considered as part of the 75th anniversary to be held Sunday, May 27, 2012, because of the additional law enforcement costs required “since 9/11”.  From a Wikipedia entry.

    “One Monday morning I just started work. It was wet, cold and slippery, you know, from the fog. I stepped onto one of the stringer beams. You’ve got to put your food down straight. Well, evidently I didn’t. I stepped out too far and I slipped. I didn’t have any fear really, I figured the net would catch me and I would bounce up and land on my feet like I’d seen in the circus. Well, the net went down to rocks. I came up. The first drop didn’t seem to hurt too much. Then I came back down. That’s when I had the pain. I broke my back in three places.”

    “So they took me to St. Luke’s Hospital, and they jacked me up and put a body cast on me right away. I was in the hospital about 12 weeks. Later I figured I’d fallen about 43 feet. And that’s how I got into the Halfway to Hell Club. “

    — Al Zampa, Ironworker. From Al Zampa and the Bay Area Bridges by John V. Robinson.

  • Jane Shortall

    Jane Shortall was born in Ireland. She had various careers, including the Aerospace business and the Equestrian Federation of Ireland. Horse riding was a passionate hobby. 

    She loves travelling, her roots are in Europe but she’s happy in the Hamptons or the wilds of Mongolia, where she has ridden with the Nomads on the Steppe. 

    Jane lived in France for many years, first in the southern mountains, then on the Riviera. Now, in a small fishing town on Portugal’s Algarve, another chapter begins.  Overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, she writes with renewed passion.  

    She can be reached by email. 


  • Sharon Kapnick

    New York City award-winning author and certified sommelier Sharon Kapnick has written about wine and food for many magazines, including Time, Food & Wine, Hemispheres, Flavor & Fortune and portfolio.com, and many newspapers, thanks to The New York Times Syndicate. She won an APEX Award for Excellence for the story “What’s for Breakfast,” published by Hemispheres. And she contributed to The Oxford Encylopedia of Food and Drink in America, published by Oxford University Press.

    Although she has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Chicago and a master’s from Boston University, the “degree” she cherishes most is the Sommelier Certificate she earned, atop the World Trade Center, from the Sommelier Society of America.

  • Jo Freeman

    Jo Freeman is a political scientist and attorney. She is currently writing a book on her experiences in the Southern civil rights movement. Her experiences in the Bay Area civil rights movement are recounted in the book At Berkeley in the Sixties.

    Jo’s newest book, We Will Be Heard: Women’s Struggles for Political Power in the United States, has been published by Rowman and Littlefield. The previous book is At Berkeley in the Sixties: Education of an Activist (Indiana U. Press 2004) and before that,  A Room at a Time:  How Women Entered Party Politics, (Rowman and Littlefield, 2000) was reviewed by Emily Mitchell, a former Senior Women Web Culture Watch critic.

    A Room at a Time has been awarded the Leon Epstein prize. This prize is given by the POP section of the APSA to a book that makes an “outstanding contribution to research and scholarship on political organizations and parties.”

    The History Book Club, a division of the Book-of-the-Month Club, selected At Berkeley in the Sixties for one of its paperback book features. For more information about the book visit: http://www.jofreeman.com/books/Berkeley.htm

    Jo’s other books include: The Politics of Women’s Liberation (1975), winner of a 1975 prize from the American Political Science Association for the Best Scholarly Book on Women and Politics;  five editions of Women: A Feminist Perspective (ed.).  She has also edited Social Movements of the Sixties and Seventies (1983), and (with Victoria Johnson) Waves of Protest: Social Movements Since the Sixties.  She has a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Chicago and a J.D. from New York University School of Law.  Read more by and about Jo at http://www.jofreeman.com and email her with comments and questions at joreen@jofreeman.com

  • Roberta McReynolds

    Roberta McReynolds retired after an 18 year career in the commercial printing industry. She particularly enjoys activities involving children, the elderly, and cancer patients & survivors, who impart new perspectives on life. Gardening, art and volunteer service fill the hours and serve to fuel her life-long passion for writing. Rediscovering the world through the eyes of her inner child keeps her imagination fresh.

    Roberta welcomes your comments: bertographer@charter.net

  • Val Castronovo

    Val Castronovo is a free-lance journalist specializing in exhibition and arts-related stories.  She is a former reporter for TIME Magazine, where she worked for 21 years. A native New Yorker and Vassar grad, she lives in Manhattan with her husband and their daughter, Olivia.

  • Jill Norgren

    Jill Norgren is a biographer, book reviewer, and longtime member (now emerita) of the political science faculty at the City University of New York. She published Rebels at the Bar: The Fascinating, Forgotten Stories of America’s First Women Lawyers (New York University Press, 2013). In 2007 she published Belva Lockwood: The Woman Who Would be President about the first American woman to be admitted to the US Supreme Court bar as well as the first woman to run a full campaign for the presidency (in 1884).

    Norgren is also co-creator of the web site HerHatWasintheRing: U.S. Women Who Ran for Political Office before 1920 — www.herhatwasinthering.org;

    Her web page can be found at: www.jillnorgren.com