Famous women

[Ladybug]

So our second grade class does a famous women project every year. They learn how to utilize the library technology to research a famous woman that they have selected. The teacher helps them brainstorm their own interest and famous women that might share some commonality with them. On Famous Women's day the girls dress up as their famous woman and are interviewed in character by the teacher for family and friends. They conduct their interviews in front of a huge wall mural of women that have influenced our collective lives and culture. It's pretty cool.

DD8 selected Lucille Ball for the shared name. I found out Lucille is actually a NYer and we're going to her hometown, childhood house and museum to do DDs research. I'm hoping this will really bring LB into reality for DD.

One of her BFFs is a swimming enthusiast. She wanted a modern woman so we help her pick Dara Toress. I want to read her Age is just a Number book. She's pretty amazing and inspiring to someone (*cough*) that's creeping up on forty.

Anywho, it got me thinking about who my famous woman would be. I'll have to think about it.

Who is your inspiring famous woman? How has she influenced your life?

[HouseofWool]

I'm not sure that they inspired me, but I have always been intrigued by Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey.

[Thirteen]

Harriet Tubman, Mother Teresa, Adrienne Rich, Gayatri Spivak & Zora Neale Hurston (to name a few).

Fascinating women!

[v-girl]

Mother Teresa!

Also really impressed with Kathy Ireland -- she has proven she wasn't just a brainless supermodel!

[GrayMatterWife]

-Elizabeth Blackwell
-Margaret Thatcher
-The BVM
-Mother Teresa
-St Agnes
-Susan B. Anthony
-Eleanor of Aquitaine
-Queen Matilda, wife of William the Conqueror
-and (I know you all will NEVER believe this...) but I have come to admire HRC in some ways. I would never vote for her, and I disagree with much of her politics, but I think she has generally served well as SoS. After going on 18 years of marriage myself, I perhaps understand a little better why she stayed with her dog of a husband (not that my DH is like that...at all!), and I admire the fact that she appears to have raised a smart, self-assured daughter in the midst of her crappy marriage problems.

[Ladybug]

--and (I know you all will NEVER believe this...) but I have come to admire HRC in some ways. I would never vote for her, and I disagree with much of her politics, but I think she has generally served well as SoS. After going on 18 years of marriage myself, I perhaps understand a little better why she stayed with her dog of a husband (not that my DH is like that...at all!), and I admire the fact that she appears to have raised a smart, self-assured daughter in the midst of her crappy marriage problems.

I'm going with Julia Child. I admire the depth of her passion that she found later in life, her meticulous attention to detail and her perseverence in writing and publishing her groundbreaking cookbook. Julia still reaches down into my own family's hearth through the modern television chefs and their food empires that she birthed. I've also been inspired, both as a teacher and a student, by her conviction that anyone can learn anything.

[McPants]

How about Vigdís Finnbogadóttir?

[scarlett09]

I'm not sure that they inspired me, but I have always been intrigued by Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey.

Jane Goodall was my college commencement speaker, she was great.

Ladybug - there is a National Women's Hall of Fame in upstate NY! Might be a good field trip?

-Elizabeth I
-Abigail Adams
-Sally Ride
-Eleanor Roosevelt
-Mother Teresa
-Victoria Woodhull
-Ida B. Wells
-Juliette Gordon Low
-Margaret Sanger
-Harriet Tubman
-Christine Todd Whitman

I'm probably forgetting some here, but I loved reading about these women, meeting them, and learning more about them. I am also influenced by my fellow women's college alumnae - damn if those aren't some incredible women!

[Momo]

...

Ladybug - there is a National Women's Hall of Fame in upstate NY! Might be a good field trip?...

great idea!

[diggitydot]

I'm fascinated by Sacagawea. Maybe because I grew up a stone's throw away from a Lewis and Clark encampment, but I've always found her story fascinating.

Little known fact: Her name is pronounced Suh-cog-uh-WAY-uh. The Sack-a-joo-WEE-uh pronunciation is not the Anglicized version, but rather the reinterpretation of her Shoshone name in the language of her Hidatsa captors. They don't have the same sounds in their languages so the j/g was simply changed.

[DCJenn]

Hmmm-

Marie Curie
Eleanor Roosevelt
Dolley Madison (growing up near where she stayed for the first night outside of the burned Washington, DC- it's a cool story)
All of my great-grandmothers- especially the one that hung herself in the closet. I just got her probate records and she was a mess. She left her kids to the care of some friend of the family who was the PA Secretary of State and he said no. This was a woman with 10 brothers and sisters in the area. I need to know what that thought process was all about.

J.