Tag: Feminism

7 Things I Love (9-26-2022)

1. This Flight Crew – In August Flight AA 372, traveling from Dallas-Fort Worth, TX to Phoenix, AZ, staffed entirely with a female black flight crew, flew in honor of aviator and veteran Bessie Coleman.

Coleman was born on January 26, 1892 and was the first black woman and Native American to receive a pilot’s license and the first black woman and Native American to receive an international aviation license from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale.

She did have to go to France to do it though because flight schools in America at the time prohibited both women and black people from applying. After she honed her skills she returned to the U.S. where she because a star as a barnstorming stunt flyer, dubbed “Queen Bess.”

[Found on Travel & Leisure]

2. This Series – Last summer I was slightly obsessed with the series Blood & Treasure. It aired on CBS and was the perfect show for the summer – a little mystery, a little romance, and a lot of adventure. Kind of like Indiana Jones mixed with the Oceans movies mixed with the Librarians.

This year it’s only airing on Paramount+. Now I have Paramount+ but the problem is I didn’t see it advertised anywhere so I only found out it was airing at all about a week ago. It actually started in July. At least if there is a season three it’ll pop up for me now (fingers are crossed.)

Here’s the Season Two Trailer.

Danny McNamara (Matt Barr) and Lexi Vaziri (Sofia Pernas)

3. This Updated Version of Courtney Cox’s Tampon Commercial – LOVE IT!

4. These Crispbread Crackers – There is regular or a gluten-free version. I’ve been having them for lunch with either cream cheese or goat cheese, sometimes I add capers and salmon or cucumbers and radishes.

[Found at Trader Joes]

5. This Instagram Post – Qasim Rachid is the best.

6. This Coffee Maker – This is why I always say that Volkswagen is (or at least was) the greatest car maker in the world – the VW Beetle.

[Found on MessyNessyChic]

7. These Beautiful Pickled Veg – This is from my favorite food vlogger Beryl Shereshewsky‘s Instagram. I’ve mentioned her before in a past Seven Things. Her next post is going to be on pickling things. Can’t wait! (Also, I need to learn how to make vegetables look this pretty.)

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Seven Things I Love (7-25-2022)

1. This Country Music Group on America’s Got Talent – I’m not a regular AGTT watcher. I tend to watch the truly amazing performers who go viral via YouTube weeks or even months after they’ve been on the show. But I managed to catch this performance just a few days after they were on. Most likely you’ve already seen it or at least heard about it.

Chapel Hart is a KICKASS trio from Poplarville, Mississippi. Their performance was so sensational that the judges (Howie Mandel, Heidi Klum, Sofia Vergara, Simon Cowell and host Terry Crews) made an exception to the rules and gave a “Golden Buzzer” to the group even though there were no more Golden Buzzers left to give.

CHAPEL HART; PHOTO CREDIT: ALEXIS CARTER

Chapel Hart (sisters Danica Hart and Devynn Hart, and their cousin Trea Swindle) performed an original song called “You Can Have Him Jolene” which is a tribute to their idol (and America’s idol) Dolly Parton.

You can watch the video (again and again) below and also read the lovely tweet from Dolly herself!

(Side note: a little history behind Dolly’s Jolene. One day Dolly met a little girl named Jolene and she said to the girl – such a lovely name, I should write a song. And she did! But she decided to use a little bit of her own life for the story. Going all the way back to just a year after she was married to her husband Carl – 1996. It seems there was a bodacious redhead making goo-goo eyes at Dolly’s hubby and that was the inspiration for the song. Needless to say, Dolly ain’t gonna let Jolene have him.)

In addition to getting this fabulous recognition from Dolly, Chapel Hart also has been invited to debut on the Grand Ole Opry. It’s been quite a week for these three young women.

(One more side note – Dolly Parton made a cameo on this week’s The Orville. She plays herself, even though it takes place in the 25th century. It’s clever how they work that out in the storyline. It was fantastic!)

If you’d like to watch the video directly on YouTube here’s the link.

[Shared with me by my friend Meta]

2. This Emu named Emmanuel Todd Lopez, and his adorable caretaker, Taylor Blake of Knuckle Bump Farms

Taylor had been making education videos when Emmanuel made an unplanned cameo and since then Taylor and Emmanuel’s videos have gone viral. People are scrambling to get a hold of some of the “Emmanuel, don’t do it!” merchandise! Taylor says – it’s coming!

Who doesn’t love emus???

[Found on LGBTQ Nation]

3. This Editorial About Why It Matters That J Lo Took Ben Affleck’s Last Name – Honestly, I don’t know why a 50+ year old (especially one who’s been married like four times) would want to take their husband’s name.

Here’s the thing – I get that it’s easier four couples to share the same last name, especially if there are kids involved. In this day and age I feel like at the very minimum that couples should hyphenate their names and both take each other’s names. There are also couples who figure out how to merge their names into a single name.

And I get it – from a family legacy thing and ancestry and all that (carry on the family name) that doesn’t work but really, the whole family legacy thing is bullshit. It’s just men and their egos.

Anyway, this article explains very thoroughly why it is problematic for Jenny from the Block to take Ben’s name.

You’re a feminist Jennifer!

4. These Coffee Pods – I have one cup of decaf coffee every morning which is why I don’t really like to make a pot or futz with a lot of different appliances.

Recently I have been using a small pour-over and it’s fine but it still takes a bit of time and effort, sometimes more than I want to put in first thing in the morning.

But I stopped using k-cups for a couple reasons, the main one being that they are bad for the environment. The second reason being that drinking a hot beverage that has been poured through plastic is not healthy. After all, we avoid putting items in plastic now in the microwave. Why would we think it’s okay to run hot water through k-cups to make coffee?

Enter Cometeer. These are “pods” in that they are pod-shaped but that is the only similarity. The contents are high-quality beans that are ground and brewed and then flash-frozen into a small sphere. The spheres are put into the pods. Cometeer sends your package in dry ice so it arrives frozen (you receive notification so you can watch for it as soon as it’s delivered and can get it into your own freezer.)

All you need to do is drop one of the spheres into a cup of hot water and you have a perfect cup of coffee. I have to say, I don’t think I’ve ever had such a smooth cup of coffee.

I signed up for a subscription (every four weeks) for the decaf package and have only tried two of the types included so far. It comes with four different varieties.

Seriously, this is life changing. Also, it makes fabulous iced coffee drinks!

[Discovered in Wired and ]

5. This Milwaukee-Themed Collage – Only Milwaukeeans will understand how wonderful this is.

Can you identify all of them?

Starting at top going clockwise: The Purple House, Brother Ron and his Religious Car, superfan Mike “Freeway” McCarter, the late year-round sunbather and nudist Dick Bacon, John Hamann aka “The Milverine”, the late Frank “Pepperoni Cannoli” Pecoraro, and in the center, TV attorney David Gruber.

[Found on On Milwaukee]

6. These Vintage Home Gadgets – Why can’t they figure out a way to make things that we use everyday that look pretty, like they used to. Okay, maybe not the mixer, but the other things are wonderful! I love those Bosch coffee grinders.

[Found on CNN]

7. This 60 Minutes Story on the 21st Century Public Library – This made me actual miss being in libraries and it’s been a long time since I felt that way.

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Seven Things I Love (3-21-2022)

  1. 1. This Postage Stamp – There have been many examples of bravery by the Ukrainian people but this particular instance stands out.

If you haven’t heard the story of the Ukrainian soldiers of Snake Island, you can read about it here, and you can hear the audio here.

[Found on My Modern Met]

2. This GoFundMe – Mila Kunis was born in Chernivtsi, Ukraine. Even though she’s lived most of her life in America and is now an America citizen, her Ukrainian heritage is near and dear to her heart. So when the war broke out, Kunis and her husband Ashton Kutcher knew that they had to do something to help. They started a GoFundMe with the plan that they would match up to $3,000,000. Never did they expect the fundraiser to reach $35 million (the current amount)!

This is the message of thanks they posted.

They also have been working with Airbnb to find housing for the refugees.

Ukrainian President Zelensky called them (via Zoom) to thank them personally for their efforts. (The man must never sleep.)

[Found on the Los Angeles Times]

3. These Pep Talks – An art teacher at West Side Elementary in Healdsburg, California thought it would be a fun project for her class to create a hotline with the kids offering upbeat and happy messages. She figured they’d get a few calls, mostly from friends and family members.

In her wildest dreams she didn’t expect this. It’s grown from a few hundred calls a day to over ten thousand calls AN HOUR. They too have done a GoFundMe to raise money to keep the hotline running.

If you don’t think that it has value, give it a call – 707-998-8410.
You’ll be a believer in no time.

[Found on the The Daily Show & Good News Network]

4. This Southeast Wisconsin Creamery – I love goat milk products – goat cheese, goat butter, goat.. well, that’s pretty much it. I was at this lovely little boucherie (butcher)/cafe in the Third Ward (Milwaukee) called Bavette’s a month or so ago and after having a yummy lunch I picked up a few things from the shop area. One of them was this goat cheese. It was the best damned goat cheese I’ve ever had!

Now, it’s not really that far for me to get down to the Third Ward, about 15 minutes maybe, but finding parking down there can be a bugger and honestly, trying to do all that rigamarole for a container of goat cheese is a bit much. I looked up the Blakesville Creamery to see if maybe their products were carried someplace a little closer to my house and discovered (a) they are located in Port Washington (which is almost the same distance as the Third Ward) but (b) they SHIP!!! I ordered my first package of cheeses and I’m in heaven.

The great thing is that their cheeses have a shelf life of about 4 to 6 weeks, so you can really stock up. And they don’t have to stay completely cold either – they age them in 55 degrees.

I say try it, you’ll like it!

5. This Comedian – I saw Catherine Cohen on Late Night with Seth Meyers last week and thought she was a hoot. She was promoting her new comedy special on Netflix and so I thought to myself, I need to make a mental note to watch that. Now normally when I make a “mental note” the likelihood that the task/idea/whatever will ever be followed up on is nearly zero but for some reason this one stuck. I not only managed to remember her name but I remembered that it was on Netflix as well. I watched it and, for the most part, I give it two energetic thumbs up. The songs are most definitely my favorite parts.

6. This To-Do List The Feminist To-Do List is bi-weekly e-newsletter from the United States of Women. It includes small tasks you can do in the fight for equality, information about feminist achievements, and things that the USOW generally thinks that we feminists would find interesting. It’s just the right amount of info and frequency. You can sign up for it here.

The United States of Women has a second newsletter you can sign up for at the same time called ‘Joy is Resistance.’ This newsletter is sent out weekly to honor and uplift during Heritage Months (periods within the year that are designated to celebrate and acknowledge various ethnic and marginalized groups.)

[Found by my good friend Ann L.]

7. These New Quarters – I got my first proof set! The first quarters with American women. Aren’t they gorgeous?

Top Row – Maya Angelou (American poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist), Dr. Sally Ride (Astronaut and physicist, first American woman in space), Anna May Wong (Actress, first Chinese American Hollywood movie star)

Bottom Row – Nina Otero-Warren (Woman’s Suffrage Movement Leader, educator, and politician), Wilma Mankiller (Native American activist, social worker, community developer and the first woman elected to serve as Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation)

They chose the five women from over 11,000 names submitted via a portal set up by the National Women’s History Museum. The plan is to release up to 5 coins each year through 2025. I signed up to automatically receive new American Women Quarters proof sets from the U.S. Mint.

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Seven Things I Love (8-2-2021)

  1. Before I get started I wanted to remind everyone that today is an important national holiday. It’s National Coloring Book Day! So be sure to pause and do some coloring at some point (well, tomorrow I suppose, but better than never, right?) And if you don’t have any coloring sheets handy, you can print out a mini-coloring book here courtesy of Dover, one of the oldest purveyors of coloring books and stickers and other fun little artsy publications. OR if you are looking for some unique, irreverent and sassy coloring books, look no further than this list. (Though don’t order them from Amazon, be sure to get them from your local bookseller or Bookshop.org.)
52232533 – woman coloring an adult coloring book, new stress relieving trend, mindfulness concept, hand detail
  1. 1. This Article about the Evolution of Female Superheroes Costumes – Many women have been writing articles lately about the impracticality of costumes for female superheroes – from Wonder Woman’s boots
  1. to Sue Storm’s boob window
Marvel’s redesign of Sue Storm’s costume in the 90s immediately comes to mind when sexist costumes are brought up.

to all the other women with skin-tight but barely there outfits. The men often have to wear skin-tight costumes, it’s true, but none of them show a lot of skin.

But more film makers are starting to take comfort into consideration when creating costumes and I suspect that has a lot to do with the fact that more women are involved in the costume making.

For example, here’s a post by Sophia Di Martino who plays Sylvie in the show Loki (which has been my favorite Marvel shows/movies to date.) Sophia is showing how her costume was altered to make it easier for her to be able to breastfeed while working. Kind of pathetic that this is newsworthy/a big deal in freaking 2021 though. Sophia’s costume also covers her body completely (not the way she’s wearing it below obviously, she has it zipped open to show you how she can pump!) It’s much more practical for climbing, jumping, running and fighting off the bad guys.

2. This Video by Olympic Medal Winner Tom Daley – I mean, if there wasn’t already enough to love about this guy – did you know he knits? Could he be any more adorable????

[Found via the Guardian which was sent to me by my friend Kathy – thanks KK!]

3. These Olympics Commercials from Toyota – Honestly, watching the commercials during the Olympics is almost as good as during the Superbowl. (The first one is visually amazing!)

4. This Guest Host on Jeopardy – A LOT of people want Levar to be the permanent host and I’m in that camp!

5. This Bird Installation – Sadly it came down yesterday, and I didn’t get to see it in person, but how cool is this?!?! I love all the art going up around Milwaukee.

Special thanks to my friend Ami Bedi who took the first photo.

Photo by Ami Bedi.
Birds in front of the Milwaukee Public Market
Close up of the Birds

6. This Photo Recreation by Tracee Ellis Ross – Fabulous! (For those who aren’t aware, Tracee Ellis Ross is the daughter of singer Diana Ross and music executive Robert Ellis Silberstein.) I think this is a wonderful tribute for a daughter to do for her mom, even if her mom isn’t Diana Ross.

Here’s the original from a ’70s editorial in W Magazine (which Tracee Ellis Ross labeled “No. 1: MAMA”) –

Here’s the recreation (which Tracee Ellis Ross labeled “No. 2: ME”) –

7. This Instastory of Florence Pugh Cooking – I love her to pieces! She’s so down-to-earth and FUNNY. And I always learn at least one thing every time I watch one of her videos.

Here’s possibly my favorite video of hers, which was a fancy-schmancy one done by Vogue, where Florence tries 11 different English Foods. Wonderful!

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Seven Things I Love (5-24-2021): History Edition

  1. 1. This Patent Drawing – Which finally puts to rest the question over or under. I don’t mean to gloat but I KNEW IT and my Mamma never lead me astray.

From My Modern Met:

Over or under? This is the question that has plagued the Western world since the invention of modern toilet paper. It was in 1857 that New York-based inventor Joseph C. Gayetty developed the first packaged variety to be made widely available in the U.S. However, it wasn’t until 1871 that perforated rolls of toilet paper were invented. Seth Wheeler filed a patent for his innovative design for the first time that year, and he filed another for a refined version of his invention again in 1891.

The illustrated diagram from Wheeler’s 1891 patent sheds some light on how the toilet paper roll was originally intended to be used. According to the image, it appears that the dangling end was designed to hang over—rather than under—the roll. This may be a crippling blow to those who are of the persuasion that under is the way to go. Even so, if hanging your toilet paper roll under is wrong, they probably don’t want to be right.

Original Patent Drawing Puts an End to the Great “Over or Under” Toilet Paper Debate” by Arnesia Young; May 13, 2021; My Modern Met

2. These Videos about Women’s Clothing in History – They are all just too good. The first talks about how women’s clothing may actually have been created to help protect. The second gives the history of how standard sizes came to be and the motivations behind doing so (hint, it’s always money.) The third video is a fascinating history of why men traditionally wear pants and women traditionally wear skirts (or did they….)

And last but not least (and this is a a wee bit of a stretch but I’m including it) a video about the clothing in the show ‘The Nevers‘ – my current favorite television show, which can be seen on HBO Max. They’ve already aired the first half of season one (8 episodes) and will be airing the second half sometime in the fall I believe (another 8 episodes.) As the vlogger mentions, the show is extremely historically accurate with their costumes (and she should know, it is her area of expertise.) She takes the opportunity to bust the myth that clothing from that era was extremely restrictive. There have been anti-corset campaigns for some time. Certainly the extremely boned corsets that reshape the body are not/were not good, but for women of this era most weren’t wearing the tightly drawn or heavily boned corsets (like Scartlett O’Hara). Unless a woman was from a wealthy family she would have been quite active and probably wouldn’t have had the luxury of having a ladies maid.

3. This Article about the New Version of the Game ‘Oregon Trail’ – A fascinating essay where the author, who is a black historian, is in a battle between his longing for childhood nostalgia and truth-telling in history. Is there really any correct way to make a game about colonialization?

John Gast, “American Progress” (1872), oil on canvas, 12 3/4 inch x 16 3/4 inch
(image courtesy Wikimedia Commons, painting in possession of Autry Museum of the American West)

4. This Article on Book Curses – In medieval times, because books were handmade, written by scribes, and took a long time to make, they were rare and had great physical value. Most scribes and book owners did not have the financial means to protect their libraries with armed guards so instead they used words to fend off would-be thieves. Fortunately for them, most people believed in curses so it worked fairly well.

What I want to know is why don’t we use book curses today? They would look so nice on a bookplate. Even if most people don’t believe in curses anymore, at least it would remind them to keep their paws off of things that aren’t theirs.

I looked up some more and found one [here] that I am going to make into stickers so I can put it inside all my books:

Whoever steals this book
Will hang on a gallows in Paris,
And, if he isn’t hung, he’ll drown,
And, if he doesn’t drown, he’ll roast,
And, if he doesn’t roast, a worse end will befall him.

From a 15th century manuscript owned by Count Jean d’Orleans.
12th century Hell. Herrad von Landsberg/Public Domain.

5. These Articles about Coco Chanel and Her Nazi Connections – I’ve always been a huge fan of Coco Chanel so when I first read about this it made me extremely sad. The first article was from nearly a decade ago and appeared on MessyNessyChic. It was written about eight months after the book Sleeping with the Enemy: Coco Chanel’s Secret War by Hal Vaughan was released. This was the first book to really include details about her involvement with the Nazis (not just that she was dating one) such as her code name, agent number, that she was included in nazi missions and worst of all, that she had taken advantage of her “Aryan rights” (meaning the seizing of Jewish-owned property and businesses.)

The second article was equally interesting. This one appeared on Forbes last year. The author is trying to determine if we can justify overlooking such a horrifying past in someone like Coco Chanel, whose left such a legacy. It’s an interesting question. I think this might be a good analogy – what if there was a building built by the nazis and after the war, all that remained was the foundation. So the French come and build a ground floor and the English build a 1st floor and the Norwegians build a 2nd floor (I’m doing the european counting of floors) and the Danish build a 3rd floor and so forth. And each floor is filled with beautiful things. But ultimately that base was built by nazis – should the entire thing be torn down and rebuilt? Should it be moved? I don’t think so.

BUT what I do think is that Chanel should stop avoiding Coco Chanel’s horrific history. I know that they think it can’t be good for PR but what they need to do is use it to help and get ahead of it. Just admit – we realize that our founder was a nazi sympathizer, possibly a nazi collaborator and our response is that we are appalled by the information as much as you are. Our founder was a talented woman and we cannot deny that Chanel wouldn’t exist without her genius but the nazi atrocities were unforgivable and that she was involved is a huge black stain on the origin of our company. They could put their money where their mouth is and contribute to a Holocaust organization.

My believe is that we should not be completely erasing bad history but instead we should be making it accurate and using it as a teaching opportunity.

6. This Article about How Women in the UK/Ireland Were Duped into Believing it was Bad to Drink Tea – Though it’s me who is saying that the women were actually duped. The article implies it but doesn’t come right out and say it. Neither does this one.

Here’s the situation – first and foremost, tea was considered expensive back then. So was sugar if you wanted to sweeten it (because milk and honey in tea just doesn’t work.) Right away men (husbands and fathers) were going to say that women shouldn’t be drinking something as expensive as tea.

Then there were the wealthy, who liked to feel that drinking tea was something the gentrified did, certainly not the poor.

And of course, there was concern that women who sat around drinking tea would have time to talk to one another and that could lead to anarchy.

Even without social media, the “powers that be” managed to get messages out that women shouldn’t be drinking tea – said it was “unhealthy”, it made you lazy, etc. And the worse part is that the poor, uneducated women were the ones that bought into the lies and helped spread it. Hmmmm, that sounds vaguely familiar.

c. 1900 The Glencar Tea House in County Leitrim

7. This ‘Self Portrait’ by Photographer Frances Benjamin Johnston – I was thrilled when I finally found out who this photo was of and what it was about. I’ve loved it for years! Taken around 1896 by the photographer herself, it is supposed to represent the “new woman.”

Here’s a great article about the photo and the photographer from Smithsonian.

Frances Benjamin Johnston could be both ladylike and bohemian, which abetted her career as a photographer. (Library of Congress)

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