march is women's history month — leonora carrington

I didn't realize that surrealist painter Leonora Carrington died last year. I had no idea that she had lived so long — she was the ripe old age of 94. Carrington was one of the few women to be welcomed into the very male club that was the Surrealists. Her work always had a quirky, original, and feminine quality.

She apparently tried to live a surreal life as well:

Leonora plunged recklessly into Surrealist Paris life. At one smart party she arrived wearing only a sheet, which she dropped at an opportune moment; she sat at a restaurant table and covered her feet with mustard, and served cold tapioca dyed with squid ink to guests as caviar. Visitors to the rue Jacob might wake up in the morning to a breakfast of omelette full of their own hair which she had cut while they slept.

Self portrait, 1936

Carrington met the much older artist Max Ernst in 1937. It must have been an instant attraction, as Ernst soon separated from his wife and settled with Carrington in France. But after the Nazi occupation of France, Ernst was arrested by the Gestapo. Art patron and fan Peggy Guggenheim helped him escape to America, leaving Carrington behind. She headed for Spain where she had a nervous breakdown. Her parents had her institutionalized where she was treated with cardiazol. Carrington managed to run away to Mexico, where she settled. She and Ernst were not together after that and he married Guggenheim.

Grandmother Moorhead’s Aromatic Kitchen

Crookery Hall, 1987

She apparently also did some writing, which I will have to check out:

A few years later, in a short story called The Debutante, she fantasised about a girl who befriends a female hyena at the zoo and decides to have it take her place at her debutante ball. The debutante assists in preparing a disguise for the animal, becoming a willing accomplice in the murder of her maid, Mary, whose face the hyena wears after eating the rest of her. The hyena reappeared in a 1937 self-portrait, along with two other figures from her short stories — a wild white horse and a white rocking horse.

A very interesting woman and artist.

Quotes from The Telegraph, Leonora Carrington, Obituary, May 26, 2011

march is women's history month — my grandmother gertrude

My father's mother was born in Marsala, Sicily and given the name Gaetana Marta. When she was five years old her mother sailed with Gaetana, her brothers Gioacchino (James), and Settimo (Seven, called Albert in the U.S.) on the Napolitan Prince to New York, to join their father, Giuseppe, a chef who a few years previously had left Sicily to establish his restaraunt on Elizabeth Street in New York City.

A serious young lady, c. 1906

Sometime after young Gaetana was being processed at Ellis Island she went from being called Gaetana to Gertrude. There are varying accounts of how, when, or why this happened, but she went from having a very Italian name to having one that was easier for her and others to say in her new country. I used to feel bad, even resentful, about her losing such a musical name as Gaetana, until I found a love letter from my grandfather to her that started, "My darling Gertie ..."

Gertrude at the piano, with her father, Don Peppino, in the background, c. 1920

Giuseppe, also called Don Peppino, was very strict, and although Gertrude had a lovely voice and wanted to be an opera singer, he forbade it as a not appropriate career for a girl. Don Peppino was also a healer. When he retired from the restaurant business he set up his own consulting practice and began to see people in his home — the local Sicilians and Italians knew, through word of mouth, to bring family and friends to him to cure any ailment. On one occasion a young man, John Angelo, brought his mother for treatment for dropsy from Paterson, N.J. to see Don Peppino. He took one look at Gertrude and that was it. When he kept coming long after his mother was on the mend, Don Peppino told Gertrude she could only continue to see him if her older brother Albert accompanied her. John brought his younger sister Margaret and the couples double dated, and both couples eventually married.

John Angelo and Gertie, young and in love

Gertrude was also talented as a seamstress and worked in the garment district (after her father died, to help bring in money for the family). After she was married she had her own bridal shop in Spring Lake, N.J. We always lived near Gertrude while I was growing up. My grandfather John Angelo had passed away long before I was ever born. She was an amazing cook — not a surprise, with a chef for a father. Like him, she was also strict, but tempered her rules with laughter. She didn't let small children do a lot of hands-on helping in the kitchen. Instead we were told we could sit and watch — and of course get treats while she was cooking. Most of the dishes she made reflected her Sicilian origins — eggplant parmigiana, garlic bread, caponata, braciole, artichoke pie, and of course her specialty, our family dish, sfincioni.

John Angelo and Gertrude on Broadway in New York, 1937

I was with my grandmother the night before she died. It was in August, and I would soon be off to college, art school, in New York. She had made another fabulous spaghetti dinner and we were all sitting around the dining room table, telling jokes and trading stories, as always — my father, mother, brother and my uncle and aunt. Grandma of course didn't want any help, and was getting up from the table, clearing, listening, and contributing to the conversation as she went back and forth to the kitchen. As she was rounding the table one more time she suddenly dropped in her tracks beside me. I caught her, so she didn't actually faint or hit the floor. We helped her to the couch and she picked up her fan — she always had a fan nearby as she would get hot in the summertime — and waved it back and forth, insisting she was fine, she had just felt a little lightheaded for a moment. My aunt and mom finished up in the kitchen and we all stayed for an hour or so with her, watching television, joking. The next day my uncle tried to call her, but didn't get an answer. When we all arrived that afternoon she was still sitting on the couch, with the television on, her head slightly to the side, as if asleep. We should all be so lucky to go that way, sharing a nice evening with people we love and then dropping off to sleep.

I still make a lot of the dishes that I learned to make from observing her in the kitchen. She was also a fantastic baker, making delicious coffee cakes, but I somehow missed out on how to make those. Everyone in the family still tries to make her specialty, sfincioni, but no one could really make it like Grandma.

Related:

sfincioni
grandma's list

march is women's history month — my great-great grandmother mariette

The Smithsonian is featuring photos of some very cool ladies on its flickr site in honor of Women's History Month. They have inspired me to feature some great women from my own family history this month. First up is my great-great grandmother, Mariette Nichols.

Mariette Nichols lived from 1847 to 1930. What a life. A young woman during the Civil War, middle-aged in the Gay '90s, a grandma during the First World War, and old lady during the Roaring '20s. The character that Maggie Smith plays on Downtown Abbey is just about the same era, if you need some pop culture context.

Mariette, like many other young ladies of her age, was lucky enough to travel to the continent with her older sister and her family, post- Civil War, c. 1870. On her travels she met a (quite) older man, Gysbert van Steenwyk, and the two became engaged. They were married in Berne, Switzerland. Despite the great difference in their ages (Gysbert was in his upper 50s, Mariette in her late 20s), they were definitely a love match, and had three children, Walter, Ella May, and Gysbert, Jr.

Mariette's family was from Danbury, Connecticut. Gysbert had come to the United States in 1848 from the Netherlands to learn to speak English and stayed. He was soon made a commissioner of immigration for the states of New York and Wisconsin. He later became a bank comptroller for Wisconsin, and eventually opened a bank in La Crosse, Wisconsin. They lived in La Crosse after they married, and Mariette stayed there until she died in 1930, 28 years after Gysbert's death in 1902.

Although Gysbert was quite successful and they seemed to have had a good life together, they also knew tragedy. They lost their youngest son, Walter, to pneumonia, at the age of eight. The romanticized family tale is that he died making "angels in the snow," but it is clear that his death left his parents heartbroken. My family never throws anything away, which is a boon for a family genealogist, and I found this poignant news clipping:

Walter's parents definitely doted on him, as there is also an adorable baby picture, another where he is sporting a Little Lord Fauntleroy-type get-up, and a formal portrait probably taken not too long before his death. A posthumous painting was made based on this picture, which we had in our living room while I was growing up. There is also this amazing ambrotype. He looks about three or four, so it was probably taken c. 1883 or 1884.

My grandmother Mariette was named after her grandmother Mariette. It's through Mariette Nichols that my family can trace its line back through the Revolution, Colonies, Salem Witch Trials and beyond. I think the family love and interest in genealogy may have started with Mariette, who was a member of the D.A.R. I'm also lucky enough to have a Civil War-era family photo album which belonged to her. I intended this post to focus solely on Mariette, but it really is impossible to write about a woman without also writing about the people she loved. I'm very grateful to have such a strong and fascinating woman in my family tree.

for women's history month ...

Article first published as Marking Women's History Month: We Still Need Strength on Blogcritics.

March is National Women's History Month, with the theme for 2011, "Our History is Our Strength."It is good to remind people of the strength and achievements of women in history, but two stories circulating on the internet lately that have become inextricably linked in my mind also point out that we may have come a long way, baby, but we still have so far to go in how women are perceived and treated. Loretta Lynn's lyrics in her album and song "We've Come a Long Way, Baby" from 1978 may state, "Up to now I've been an object made for pleasin' you — Times have changed and I'm demanding satisfaction too," but it's clear that message hasn't been heard by all.

A viral email, supposedly written by a member of the Kappa Sigma fraternity at USC expounds the notion that women are still viewed primarily as objects — maybe even less, as isolated body parts. It's a frat boy handbook, a guide for guys who want to score with chicks. The anonymous (for the moment) author constructs a detailed manifesto, designed to be distributed to his fraternity brothers, with instructions to have sex and report back to him for a "gullet report." Women are not individuals or even human beings in his view, "Note: I will refer to females as 'targets.' They aren't actual people like us men. Consequently, giving them a certain name or distinction is pointless," but solely referred to as an orifice — in his vernacular — gullets and pies. "I want raw data on who fucks and who doesn't. In conclusion the gullet report will strengthen brotherhood and help pin-point sorostitiutes more inclined to put-out."

College is still the bastion where sexual experimentation and personal growth go hand in hand with course learning. Classic frat films like Animal House and Revenge of the Nerds humorously depict the desire of frat boys to successfully hook up with chicks. But those movies aren't mean-spirited or belittling. This email, for all of its "no feeling on earth can compare to a warm piece of pie" bullshit, is an extremely calculated demeaning of women. It goes so far beyond the centerfold/porn mentality — an image of a woman as an object to get off on — that it's almost hard to believe it's real. Almost. But I think it is very real.

This email is not just a cultural blip, a trifle. As noted by commenter TeacherDee on Jezebel, " ... "Do you have any idea how many of these guys become managers, directors, politicians, CEOs and on and on and on? ... These guys do not wait till they're at a party or whatever to objectify women, they are doing it all the time. ... Men like this, in leadership positions that cause them to consider women (maternity leave, reproductive rights, domestic violence etc), do not see women as equal human beings and do not make decisions that are good for women."

Equals?

Considering the atrocious actions of another fraternity of sorts recently in Texas, it's abundantly clear that for many young men today, women aren't real people, but objects.  A young girl, aged 11, was brutally raped by at least 18 boys and men in Cleveland, Texas this past November. As if that story isn't horrific enough on its own, there are some disturbing issues raised by how the crime has been reported in the New York Times. 

At the moment the girl involved in the incident is in foster care in a different town in a different school, as both the authorities and her family fear retribution from the community and families of her attackers. Retribution for a child, a sixth grader, and her family after she had been raped, multiple times, by boys and men, schoolmates and local adults. An attack like this is a stain on any community, but is hardly new. Rape has been used throughout history, women's history, for both sexual and political humiliation. Communities, both real and virtual, need to not rally around the attackers and excuse their behavior as pack mentality by highlighting such quotes as the Times did, "How could their young men have been drawn into such an act?" Oh, the poor young men, duped and lured.

Poynter.org called out the Times for its shoddy reporting and implied viewpoint, and the Times has since issued a pale admission that maybe it didn't get the story completely right the first time. But maybe Times reporter James C. McKinley Jr.'s "angle" goes to a deeper truth that no one wants to acknowledge. As  commenter Amy suggested, if the 11-year old had been a boy, both the Times and the community would have reacted and framed this story much differently. The Times hardly mentioned the victim or her attackers. Although some of the men were definitely adults, none were identified in even the vaguest way. The Houston Chronicle wrote a much more balanced and descriptive account, "So far, 17 suspects have been charged, ranging in age from a middle-schooler to a 27-year-old. Seven are high school students, including two members of Cleveland's state-ranked basketball team. Another is the 21-year-old son of a school board member." Why so coy, New York Times?

Horrible also is that so many people, the in-denial neighbors, friends and relatives of the Texas gang-bangers, and the USC students who are sharing the "gullet report" email or dismissing it as merely a prank, are somehow promoting and abetting this treatment of women by refusing to call it out for what it is — unacceptable, shameful, horrifying. Are they that de-sensitized to this way of thinking of women? In regards to the USC email, have young women trained themselves to look the other way from an undercurrent of misogyny in order to get their rocks off? There is nothing in the USC email to indicate that the author even comprehends in the slightest way that a woman might be out cruising for sex and treating him as an object. He is either stupid or only interested in a scenario where he is the one putting a notch on his bedpost. But he isn't satisfied to be on a personal sexual journey. He has to drag all his fraternity brothers into his philosophy, to his level, "My hope is that ALL of our brothers will follow this creed with pride and distinction"

So similar in attitude to the creeps in Texas who weren't satisfied with their initial humiliation of the 11-year-old they were sexually abusing, but during an "intermission" started calling all of their friends to join in. According to the Houston Chronicle, "Not long afterward, the group fled through a back window when they heard a relative of one of the teens arriving at the blue house. The 11-year-old left behind her bra and panties as the group moved to the nearby abandoned trailer, where the assaults continued. As the men had sex with the girl, others used their cell phones to take photographs and video, police said." Not only was the young girl repeatedly physically assaulted, but the abuse continued as the event was shared and re-shared. That sort of rape is beyond misogynistic. It's strangely guy-centered sex. It's not heterosexual or even homosexual. It's just fucked up beyond belief.

Women's History Month is usually celebrated by remembering the achievements of women. But maybe we should be using Women's History Month as a signal to remember that as far as women's rights may have come, our society still has a long, long, way to go. Blaming the victim still seems to be par for the course, as the Times, a newspaper that is supposed to be held up as one of the best in the nation, had nary a description of the girl or her family or even much information about the attackers, but included observations and quotes from Cleveland, TX residents like, “Where was her mother? What was her mother thinking?” McKinley Jr. went so far as to report, "Residents in the neighborhood ... said she dressed older than her age, wearing makeup and fashions more appropriate to a woman in her 20s. She would hang out with teenage boys at a playground." Why was that the focus, the highlight?