bookish

Did you know? The United States, to this day, lacks fundamental legislation that protects women from all forms of gender discrimination. One way women have tried to remedy that is by passage of an Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the constitution. Introduced in every Congress since 1923, it came very close to becoming law in the 1970s.

This spring I’m working on writing a museum exhibit about the ERA for the Clark County Historical Museum in Vancouver, and I’ve been encountering all sorts of great source material.

Even during my first visit to the museum, I discovered a shocking piece of political paraphernalia dating from 1893. At first I thought “American Woman and Her Political Peers” was intended to portray the women fighting for equal rights as abnormal. Turns out it was made by a suffragette to show that women had, at that time, similar political rights as convicts, Native Americans, the retarded, and the insane. Clearly the suffragettes knew how to use media to their benefit.

One document that is fairly rare, and of particular importance to the exhibit is the report of the Washington State International Women’s Year Conference from 1977. Although Washington had voted to ratify the ERA in 1973, this conference was the site of a battle amongst women that impacted all of Washington’s women moving forward. The report is a fascinating read and meditate on how the more things change, the more things stay the same. Sobering.

It has been eye-opening learning about Phyllis Schlafly, and discovering how major a role she had in changing the ERA’s chances for success as the 1970s progressed. I’ve also enjoyed reading things like the infamous memo that claims the ERA will turn women into “a new breed of Amazons” or that it would lead to unisex bathrooms, which are fairly common now anyway. If you’re not very familiar with Phyllis, I encourage you to check her out, possibly here or here. She’s quite a piece of work.

Our exhibit will also have a television component, which I’m hoping will feature portrayals of women through the years. The other morning I did a little YouTube research, and without even trying I found a litany of cringeworthy commercials spanning the 1950s through today. Here’s a sample:

Just wait until the voiceover at the end…

I saw this one a lot right before Valentine’s Day. THIS YEAR!

Good grief! Here are some mid-century print ads that are also shocking in their blatancy. (“You mean a woman can open it?”)

Finally, since November I’ve been slowly working my way through The Women’s Room by Marilyn French. A bestseller in 1977, the story follows Everywoman Mira Ward through her childhood, schooling, marriage, childrearing, divorce, return to school, as she has a gradual feminist awakening. It’s classic second-wave feminism, and a great read despite some pages-long idealistic flights of fancy. Although I’m not sure the book will be terribly useful to the exhibit, it has certainly been a dynamic read.

One thing we’re hoping to do at the end of exhibit is give people the opportunity to share how gender inequality impacts their lives. Has gender inequality impacted you? If the ERA got sent to the states for ratification today, would you vote for it?

When I started Bookish, I didn’t have a specific content goal, but aimed to relate most of my posts to a book. It could be a book I was currently reading, had read in the past, or just wanted to read–but I wanted the book to relate to the blog post somehow. Hence the name “Bookish.”

Unfortunately I never put that vision in writing.

When I was recently featured on A Year in Bread, I realized that I had been straying enough that Bookish was seeming like more of a mish-mash of topics to the outsider. The epic Sweetpea Journey (soon to come to an end!), or the profession about my Farmville addiction were eclipsing posts that featured great anti-clutter books, style guides, or cookbooks.

Moving forward, I am adopting the following content credo for the blog:
Looking at the world through book-colored glasses.

What do you think?

As I put together my graduate school application last month, I rediscovered that I’m not the world’s greatest self-marketer. The experience set off a storm in my brain that has been raging ever since.

It started when a friend read a draft of one of the writing pieces I was to submit as part of the application. Overall, she said, it sounded as if I need them, instead of them needing me. After some revision I sent it to another friend, who said the same thing and suggested a few changes to be bolder.

It sounded like I was begging for admission because that’s exactly what was going through my head as I was writing the first draft. The program sounds perfect for me, and I was really hoping they would see it the same way.

If I hadn’t procrastinated on writing the piece, perhaps realizing it was essentially a marketing document would have been made when I still had plenty of time to reformulate the entire piece. It ended up decent in the end, but arguably not my best work.

In the aftermath my inner perfectionist has started demanding answers: how does one become a strong self-marketer? How do you discuss your own strengths confidently without coming across as a snake oil salesman? Normally I would say that practicing is the best way to build a skill, but how can you practice self-marketing on a regular basis? I definitely need easier access to my inner P.T. Barnum.

Do you have any ideas on how to become a better self-marketer? Please share them with the rest of the class!

Avid readers of this blog (greetings spambots!) may remember the overnight bike camping trip I did in July to Stub Stewart State Park. On that post, my friend Lily commented that I should also try the wintertime cabin camping trip to the same park. Her suggestion was intriguing, and rolled around in my head for the next six months, until last week when I deliberated heavily over whether or not to actually do it.

In the end, I did.

Day 1: Rain

The weather screamed “It’s January, and you’re in Oregon!” The sky was completely overcast, the unmistakable light gray of the Pacific northwest rain forest. The temperature was 45 degrees. It rained. ALL. DAY. LONG. The world was muddy and soggy.

After experiencing some TriMet fail, I arrived at our start location at 12:25pm, to find a palpable lack of bicyclists. Hoping that the ride hadn’t left without me, I suddenly remembered to check at the Starbucks a block away, where most everybody was chatting while waiting for our delayed ride leader. Turns out he biked all the way from North Portland to Hillsboro–because he was bringing a 24″ computer monitor for everyone to watch movies on–and had gotten a flat en route. Once he showed, we set out.

Meandering along the same rural roads as in July, my heart sank when I remembered how particular farms looked at the height of summer compared to rainy January. Waving fields of wheat were now giant mud pits. A friendly blue sky with a view of Mt. Hood in July had turned into a drizzly gray backdrop. After the obligatory food stop at the Thriftway in Banks, we started heading for the woods.

Fortunately, the time spent on the Banks-Vernonia Trail was much more pleasant, as evergreen forests become more charming with the rain. The color of the trees was enhanced by the drizzle, and the decaying plant matter on the ground was more hopeful than depressing. Lichen-covered branches on the trail kept navigation interesting, and the deep green moss thrived on rotting stumps on the forest floor. Over about 1/4 mile, I spied several newts crossing the trail–undoubtedly the high point of the day.

There was some confusion amongst the group once we got to the park, resulting in me getting to the cabins after dark after having waited outside the visitor center for about 30 minutes. Once at the cabins, I stood outside a while–otherwise I probably would have started biting people’s heads off. Because I was the second to last one in, everyone had already claimed beds. This meant I was to sleep in a futon bed in the “front room” of one of the cabins…a small area that ended up holding our entire group of 15 people that evening. Not an ideal arrangement.

While our raingear, gloves, and shoes were draped on doorways, curtain rods, and windowsills to dry the group started gathering to chat. There was much alcohol, and the option for a cosmopolitan even had me partaking a little. This was probably for the best, as it mellowed me out for the evening.

Day 2: Holding Pattern

My scalp feeling like a petri dish, I took a delightful, though lukewarm, shower Saturday morning. By 1pm a group of people took a side trip into Vernonia for Chinese food, two of my favorite people on the trip decided to go back to Portland (SOB!), and almost everybody else was in the “movie cabin” watching movies with the large monitor. Time to myself! I swept the cabin floor (already very dirty), worked on a New York Times Crossword, then took an hourlong nap as the heater finished drying my shoes and the sun shone brightly through the cabin windows. After that, a short hike with Matt where we counted the clearcuts you could see from one of the park’s designated viewpoints (below) and discovered a recent burn area. During the evening, I ended up in the “movie cabin,” where we watched a hilarious 1986 movie with Kevin Bacon as a NYC bike messenger–Quicksilver.

Day 3: Home

It was a great morning. A hot shower, along with thoughts of going home and thoughts of my birthday energized me. Ominous rainclouds in the park changed to less threatening clouds once we were out of the mountains, and taking my rain pants off in mid-ride made the ride even more enjoyable. The transit ride from Hillsboro to home went off smoothly. Once home, my parents took me out for a birthday dinner, after which I chatted with my friend Heather on the phone for a while, stirring up questions in my brain around how I interface with the bike community. It made me sad, as it seems most people view my need to slowly warm up to people as a personal failure, whereas I view it as the community’s inability to adapt to people who aren’t outgoing and gregarious–which has left many of us who participate in many events feeling like outsiders despite our involvement.

After a little unpacking, I retired for the evening. Nestled in my own bed, I slept gloriously.