One hundred years since women won the right to vote. One hundred days until the election. One hundred women with one hundred stories.
The first day of school can be scary. New people, new rules, a new environment. Now, add a violent mob, federal marshals, and death threats. This is what six-year-old Ruby Bridges faced on her first day of her new, all-white elementary school. Ruby Bridges was born in 1954, the same …
Ruth Wakefield was a dietician who invented the chocolate chip cookie, which makes them healthy and just fine to eat in bunches, right? Born in 1903, Ruth graduated from Framington State Normal School Department of Household Arts in 1924. She taught home economics, gave lectures on food and cooking, and …
It’s a lyrical image: two young children wandering the English countryside with sketchbooks, plopping down suddenly in the tall grass to open their water color cases and start to paint. This was childhood for Helen Beatrix Potter, whose love of art and animals led to the most successful children’s literature …
Happy National Sisters Day! Anyone growing up with a sister knows – it’s complicated. Today, if I said to my sister “I need someone to . . .” she’d already be ringing my doorbell. Our teen years? Between the fighting and hair pulling and the rest of the family sick of …
Hers was a life of firsts: The first African-American woman elected to the Texas Senate after Reconstruction. The first woman from Texas, and the first African-American woman since 1898, to be elected to the United States House of Representatives. The first African-American woman to serve on the House Judiciary Committee. …
A few years ago on a trip to Portland, we came across this stunning mural on a walk around town. The artist, known as Faith XLVII or Faith47 (her given name is Liberty Du) is a self-taught street artist from South Africa, whose work can be seen around the world. …
Saima Abbasi is as surprised as anyone that a childhood love of nature has blossomed into a passion for the environment that has her working with local organizations here and in her native Pakistan to create sustainable natural habitats. She explains her work this way: “Where you live is the …
A star in many fields, Maria (pronounced Mar-eye-ah) Mitchell, the first female astronomer in the United States, was also an educator, librarian, naturalist, suffragette and anti-slavery activist. Born in Nantucket, Massachusetts in 1818, Maria’s Quaker parents believed all their children should be educated – not a common idea back then. …
The true story of Marie Antionette begins on Nov. 2, 1755 with her birth in Vienna. The eleventh child of the Empress Maria Theresa, ruler of the Habsburg Empire, and the Holy Roman Emperor Francis I, Maria Antonia (her Austrian name) is destined to live a life dictated by others. …
How do I write a poem for a statue? That was the question Emma Lazarus posed in 1882, when she was asked to donate an original work to help raise money for the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. Her first response was no, despite her own immigrant story: The …