Found my "Women's Roles in 19th-Century America" book on the shelves at San Francisco State Library. It is dedicated to Lillian, so here she is, full circle, with "her" book.
AND I was pleasantly surprised to see how often it has been checked out.
I wonder if a prof. is assigning it for a class...? 🤔

True story: When I was in grad school I used to just sit and read on the floor on the HQ (Women's Studies) aisle and my dream was to have a book published and catalogued under HQ. Don't ever give up your dreams, kids.

I was in Berkeley all weekend with my Model UN students - a great, experienced group, and an easy trip, even though the Berkeley campus was bigger and busier and a little trickier to navigate than we're used to at Stanford. I also got to meet up with my former student, Ruby (MMS Class of 2018) who attends Berkeley now, and Miles took the train over from SF to spend some time with me on Saturday.

We wandered into a bookstore and I found this vintage book, _Woman_, published in 1901. It includes several well-known (to me, and to people in 1901, ha) contributors, including international suffragist and peace activist, May Wright Sewall; abolitionist, women's rights activist, and colonel of one of the first black regiments in the Civil War, Thomas Wentworth Higginson; and David Starr Jordan, the first president of Leland Stanford Junior University (aka Stanford University).
The book is in perfect condition, and looks brand new, which is bad for books, but good for collectors.

I was recently reading an essay by John Steinbeck in which he explained why he cared nothing for collecting old or valuable books. He complained when his publisher released special anniversary or leather-bound editions of his works, or asked him to sign copies for special distribution or sale. He did not like the idea of trying to add value to a physical book, beyond the value of the words inside. He said he never spent his money collecting books, and would rather see beloved books bent and used up and passed along to someone else.

Point taken, but I love my new 118 year old book in pristine condition. :)

RBG & the Constitution

I finally saw "On the Basis of Sex" last night. As a historian/teacher/scholar, I appreciate any effort to make research and written and oral argumentation seem exciting and suspenseful! I also enjoyed Kathy Bates as Dorothy Kenyon, an earlier feminist lawyer who had not been able to do what RBG ultimately did, and the conversation between Kenyon ---> RBG ---> RBG's let's-protest-in-the-streets teenaged daughter, Jane Ginsburg, as representative of the changes happening across the generations and the feminist "waves" working together. Nice touch, Hollywood.

Speaking of Hollywood, an older man outside the theater was handing out papers to all of us before we went in, on which he somewhat sloppily explained the the movie was full of LIES. In particular, he warned us about a scene in which young RBG notes that the word "freedom" is not in the U.S. Constitution. His handy-dandy handout helpfully pointed out that the word "freedom" is, in fact, right there in the 1st Amendment, regarding "freedom of speech."

(Hmmm.. so, he had a point, but I don't know why Hollywood would LIE about the Constitution, especially if it makes it seem like RBG doesn't KNOW her Constitution....If liberal Hollywood was going to lie, they'd want to prop up our heroine by making her look even smarter than she is, right??!)

Obviously it was my duty (as a citizen, a government teacher, and as a fan of RBG willing to turn a blind feminist eye to pesky facts like the Constitution) to respond to this dilemma, so I looked up this man's complaint and found a couple of articles that refer exactly to that scene and explain that, as a Constitutional scholar, Ginsburg was referring to the *original* unratified and unamended Constitution - in fact, her entire point in that scene in the movie was that, starting from the beginning (with the Bill of Rights), we have expanded the definitions of freedom and equality to protect citizens' rights and liberties that were not in the original Constitution. That the Constitution CHANGES, including through interpretation of the laws.

Hmph, take that old guy with nothing better to do than type up complaints about Hollywood, make a bunch of copies, and then stand outside the movie theater in the cold & rain trying to protect our democracy from RBG.