Viva la Feminista

My friend, Alida Brill , and her friend, artist Susan Springer Anderson, have collaborated on a project to commemorate the 100th Anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire , and which they call simply: 11.03.25.11 The show A League Of Our Own , with both Susan and Alida interviewed by Fran Spencer will air Thursday, March 24th from 6 pm to 6:30 pm EST. It can be heard on 88.7 FM in Nassau and western Suffolk and some parts of Manhattan, but it can be heard worldwide at WRHU.org. Here is the exact link to listen online: http://live.streamwrhu.net/ A "virtual event" will happen on Alida's website on Thursday before the radio show and will remain up throughout the weekend and throughout next week. Susan's piece is a creative reinterpretation of a shirtwaist of the time, using Tyvek, a building material. Her choice of "fabric" has special meaning and is discussed by Susan in the radio interview and will be described fully on the website Thursday....

This post is part of the WAM! It Yourself Blogathon ! WAM! It Yourself is a multi-city decentralized conference on gender and media run by Women, Action & the Media. Events are taking place in seven cities and online from March 20th to March 27th. Check out the full schedule of events here ! I hiked down to McCormick Place to attend the second annual Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo on Saturday. I was able to attend by requesting a press pass. I'm not writing this because it was a condition of the pass though. OK, disclaimer out of the way. How did it go? It was fun. I could only attend for a few hours, but it was fun to sit and watch all the fans walking around. The families passing on their love of comics & comic-related entertainment to the kids. The geek couples dressed up and holding hands. The groups who dressed up in themes or didn't dress up at all. But the group that drew me in the most were the dads walking around with...

Watch the full episode . See more To The Contrary. Thanks to friend of VLF, Kim Gandy for mentioning this blog while discussing mom blogs on this week's episode of " To the Contrary." Bonnie Erbé starts the conversation about mom bloggers off at 9:45 in the video. The focus starts with women's purchasing power and how some mom bloggers are "an advertisers dream come true." Kim jumps in around 12:10 in the video. It's a great topic that Bonnie introduced, one that many of us mom bloggers have debated on and off-line for years . Where is the line between suggesting products that work to your friends/readers and just using them to pitch junk to so you get paid? And what does that do to our community? So Bonnie, if you want to continue this conversation, let me know and I'll high tail it to DC. Even if I did just get back from DC on Friday. There's also PunditMom in your backyard. But she does have ads on her blog, I don't. So there....re...

cross-posted from Blog for Choice with permission. The anti-choice leadership of the U.S. House of Representatives is waging a War on Women, and the attacks keep getting more extreme.  Mother Jones is reporting  that H.R.3, the dangerous "Stupak on Steroids" bill , could subject survivors of rape and incest who choose to terminate their pregnancies to audits by the Internal Revenue Service. Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, which helped break this story, called the bill a callous assault on women's freedom and privacy : This bill gets more outrageous and insulting by the day. Not only would a woman have to describe her sexual assault to the police, but she could then be forced to relive that horrifying experience with an agent from the IRS. The 221 members of Congress who signed their names to this egregious bill must explain to their constituents why they want to give the IRS authority to audit rape survivors. Why, indeed? It's yet ...

[Patti] Smith was 29 when she recorded Horses . Joan Didion was 29 when she wrote her first novel. Tina Fey was 29 when she was named head writer of SNL. bell hooks was 29 when she published her first major work. Oprah had just turned 30 when she got her first local TV talk show. There is a reason “boy genius” rolls off the tongue more naturally than “girl genius.” By the time most of us accept the fact that we have earned this label for ourselves, we are most decidedly no longer girls. The concluding paragraphs of this 'girl genius' article by Ann Friedman really punched me in the gut. Of course I started to reflect on where *I* was at 29. Look at how awesome these women were at 29. I tease a lot that I'm a total slacker. 29? Pfft! What the hell was I doing then?  Um, a lot. I had a one year-old on my hands, a new job in a new field and had just purchased my first home. But I was also being wooed. By my current job.  When the wooing became serious, I sprinted t...

I've gotten to a point where the number of books I'm "currently" reading has overwhelmed me. This is because I've been trying to read for "fun" in between reading for class. So instead of waiting another year or three to review this great books, I'm just going to tell you to go get a copy now. I think I've read enough of each of these to give my thumbs up. So what am I trying to read? A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique & American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s by Stephanie Coontz  [ IndieBound :: Powells ] I love Coontz. She's written some of my fave books and this is certainly going to join them as a favorite. Coontz visits with women and a few men who read "The Feminine Mystique" to see how the book touched their lives. She also revisits the facts Friedan uses in the book as well as the reality that was the 1960s. I'm only a few chapters in and it's fascinating. I'm not only a fan of women's history, bu...

Cross-posted from Blog for Choice with permission. Yesterday, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky turned a hearing on energy-efficient light bulbs into a rant about his right to choose . His right to choose toilets, that is. When it comes to a woman's right to choose abortion care, Sen. Paul is against that-- even if the woman has been raped or is the survivor of incest . The senator's exchange with Kathleen Hogan, a Department of Energy official, was so bizarre that we're sharing it here with you for full effect: So, if we understand Sen. Paul, he essentially says that women should have greater rights at the appliance store than in their doctor's office, where they will make profoundly personal decisions.  Let's tell the Senate to flush this misguided philosophy.

Breast Cancer Action , the organization that brought us " Think Before You Pink ," has a new executive director. BCA is a great organization that talks more about preventing breast cancer than the others. Yes, they are seeking a cure, but they really want us to consider why breast cancer is on the rise or seems to be. Each time I hear of a friend of a friend discover she has breast cancer, that friend says, "Seems like it's getting worse." I feel more like it's zeroing in on us...Ya know what I mean? I'm tired of buying trinkets to save our lives. I want action. It's nice to have rabblerousers in the mix reminding us to push harder. If you have had experience with BCA, please share!

It's time for the annual Women Employed Working Lunch ! And this year Donna Brazile is the keynote speakr. AND...I'm on the host committee. Event Details: When: Thursday, May 19, 2011 Where: Fairmont Chicago Millennium Park 200 N. Columbus Drive, Chicago Networking Reception: 11:00 a.m. - Noon Luncheon & Program:  Noon - 1:30 p.m. I've attended one lunch and it was a great time.Which is one reason why I agreed to be on the host committee this year. It's a great event to catch up with some of the fab women of Chicago whom I only see at events like this, but also a great way to meet NEW fab friends. It is a bit pricey ($125) but the money goes to an amazing organization that works on issues around women in the workplace and getting women the training they need to move into better paying jobs. They don't focus on just issues about white collar work, but also issues that working class women are fighting for like paid sick days. And since I'm on th...

Palin just got the location incorrect. Rather than death panels being a part of health care reform, death panels are alive and well in current insurance policies: In the days after a football injury left Eisenhower High School running back Rasul "Rocky" Clark paralyzed from the neck down, he was showered with attention from medical professionals and assured by school officials that he would be well taken care of, he said. For nearly a decade Clark enjoyed superb medical care — nurses in his home around the clock, access to pain medicines and prescriptions and a storeroom of supplies. Now the $5 million insurance policy that once covered Clark's medical care has reached its lifetime maximum and come to an end — and along with it, many of the benefits he once enjoyed. Those benefits may have kept him healthy enough to surpass the life expectancy for most quadriplegics, his mother and primary physician said. "I was told I'd be taken care of all of my l...