Women's Voices For Change

Fourth of July Poetry Friday: The Truth is Marching on

We last mentioned Julia Ward Howe in connection with Mother's Day, and her work in campaigning for a "day of peace" to heal from the Civil War. But many, if not most, people remember her as the poet who put words to the song "John Brown's body is a-moulderin in the grave," and turned it into an anthem for Union troops in that war. Mine eyes have seen the glory Of the coming of the Lord He is trampling out the vintage Where the grapes of wrath are stored He has loosed the fateful lightening Of His terrible swift sword His truth is marching on I have seen ...

Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore…

The state of California will issue IOUs to its business vendors, students awaiting financial aid payments, and taxpayers expecting refund checks. When I first read this story, I had to check the calendar – was it April 1? No, this April Fool’s joke is exactly three months late. I am reminded of my childhood, playing the Game of Life with friends, occasionally resorting to using those last-resort Promissory Notes, which even we kids knew could end up worthless. The need to issue promissory notes spells out just how dire California’s financial situation now is. It seems the “Golden State” may ...

Toni Geyelin: Give Madoff Some Cellmates

So, Mr. Bernard Madoff is going to jail for 150 years. Seems like a fairer sentence than the twelve his lawyers asked for. But you know what? I don't think he should be there alone; I think he should have some company. Quite a lot of company in fact. Who should be there with him? For starters, all the fund managers who fed him funds and either didn't do their homework (usually known as due diligence) or didn't fess up to knowing that this was a Ponzi scheme. Collecting fees for work you do not do, or allowing clients to invest ...

Jackson and Sanford: Consider the Women

Jenny Sanford and Katherine Jackson. Did we even know their names before last week? Can we connect them by anything other than the point size of the headlines surrounding the doomed men in their lives? Is it about what mothers have that allows them to hold themselves together for their children? Or is it as Amelia Earhart would have had us believe when she said, “Courage is the price life exacts for peace?” These questions insist themselves as one reads today’s newspaper (Yes, most of us who write for and read WVFC still read newspapers). Jenny Sanford has said that though she ...

Dr. Pat, Hormone Therapy Gave Me My Life Back

Dear Dr. Pat, I read your medical advice to menopausal women, and I have a sense that you are not a big fan of hormone therapy. I am now forty-nine years old, and my last period was two years ago. I am very healthy and try to find the best information I can to make intelligent choices about my health. I have tried for the last 18 months to take the right vitamins, to exercise daily, to do yoga and meditation, and to use Vagifem and Vitamin D and lots of lubrication, so that I could have sex if I desired ...

Tenacious on Desolation Sound

The seventh season of our sailing odyssey along the coast of British Columbia has begun. My husband, Patrick, and I can’t seem to stop coming back to these waters; the drama of sea and mountain, sun on snow, ancient cultures and wildlife draws us back to the northwest coast year after year. We’ve had extraordinary weather this June. Typically cold and rainy, this month it has been almost unrelentingly sunny, with day after day of temperatures in the high 70s and low 80s. It has made cleaning up, commissioning, repairing and provisioning our 50-foot Mikelson cutter so much easier and more ...

After the Meltdown and Madoff, Back to Basics for Investors Like Us

I am delighted and indeed very flattered to have been invited to write for WVFC, joining this group of very talented women. The idea is that I will be able to add some commentary on the financial world, which is the one I come from. I am one of those people who has reinvented themselves several times and am now in the process of doing it again. These are stressful times for all of us, and the financial news is often difficult to deal with. It is especially hard for those of us who, as the New York Times noted recently, ...

A Visit to Royal Ascot: Quail Eggs, Fascinators and a 17-year-old Hat

(Yesterday was the final day of the Royal Ascot, the British racing event run personally by the Queen of England. In our quest to bring you the freshest news from around the world, WVFC asked our own executive director, Mary Kelly Selover, to describe her first and only visit to the races. We won't ask her to explain the hat thing, though. — Ed.) When my London-based friend Kim said, “Why don’t you come over for Royal Ascot?” I knew I had to go. I'd experienced the same feeling 17 years earlier when Kim invited me to her wedding; as a ...

The Unexpected Joy of Impending Senility

James Thurber once wrote a delightful essay on the hidden benefits of being nearly blind, which he was. It was called “The Admiral on the Wheel,” and was so named because that was the image he saw one starlit evening on a drive with a friend. The admiral was in full uniform and bicycling at right angles to the car he was in, Thurber recalled, and might, to a sighted person, have been anything from the moon shining on a billboard to an advertisement for a soft drink. “But I’ll know him when I see him again,” Thurber avowed. I have ...

Jacki Lyden: Iran at Another Crossroad

It seems like only yesterday I was driving, through the middle of the night, down Vali-Asr street in downtown Iran, behind the wheel of a blue truck we called the Bas-Mobile. The flames of workers’ fires lit the streets. The gurgling of small streams beside the long avenues could be heard. The scene was romantic and exhilarating, because so much of what I was finding contradicted Iran’s stern image. And I had encountered someone . My new boyfriend was a young Iranian chemical engineer, and we had fallen in love while I was on assignment for NPR to cover the ...

Health

Dr. Pat, Hormone Therapy Gave Me My Life Back

Dear Dr. Pat,
I read your medical advice to menopausal women, and I have a sense that you are not a big fan of hormone therapy. I am now forty-nine years [...]

Dr. Cecilia Ford: When Is Enough Enough?

In response to Dr. Allen’s visual assault by an overexposed jogger the other morning, I have to say that it seems true: No lower limit has been discovered as far [...]

Kathleen O’Brien: With Cancer, Some Days You’re Lady Liberty, and On Others….

Kathleen O’Brien has been a journalist for three decades. Her long-running column for the Newark Star Ledger “looks at life from the kaleidoscopic perspective of wife, mother, taxpayer, commuter and [...]

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Recent Articles

Fourth of July Poetry Friday: The Truth is Marching on

We last mentioned Julia Ward Howe in connection with Mother’s Day, and her work in campaigning for a “day of peace” to heal from the Civil War. But many, if [...]

Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore…

The state of California will issue IOUs to its business vendors, students awaiting financial aid payments, and taxpayers expecting refund checks. When I first read this story, I had to [...]

Skinny Girls Don’t Have All the Fun

My Way, “mine own” 23-foot sailboat, has been in the water for almost two months. But due to travel and other commitments, today is just the second time I was [...]

The Arts

Fourth of July Poetry Friday: The Truth is Marching on

We last mentioned Julia Ward Howe in connection with Mother’s Day, and her work in campaigning for a “day of peace” to heal from the Civil War. But many, if [...]

Jackson and Sanford: Consider the Women

Jenny Sanford and Katherine Jackson. Did we even know their names before last week? Can we connect them by anything other than the point size of the headlines surrounding the [...]

Poetry Friday, Iran Edition: Forugh Farrokhzad, “why should I stop, why?”

These past two weeks, we’ve been as spellbound and horrified by events in Iran as the rest of the nation, paying special attention to the women often at its center. [...]

The Compass Rose: Living Incognito

One of the more surprising perks of our relocation from North Carolina to California has been the thrill of complete anonymity. I did not think I would ever see this [...]

A Visit to Royal Ascot: Quail Eggs, Fascinators and a 17-year-old Hat

(Yesterday was the final day of the Royal Ascot, the British racing event run personally by the Queen of England. In our quest to bring you the freshest news from [...]

Poetry Friday: A Rainy Night With Sharon Olds and Elizabeth Alexander

On June 18th in Central Park, the rain held out long enough for poems from Sharon Olds, Thomas Sayers Ellis and Elizabeth Alexander, in a reading and round table [...]

Jacki Lyden: Iran at Another Crossroad

It seems like only yesterday I was driving, through the middle of the night, down Vali-Asr street in downtown Iran, behind the wheel of a blue truck we called the [...]