First Person Singular by Wendy Braitman

The Glorious Dorothy Height, 1912-2010

Dorothy Height (with one of her signature hats in the photo above) met Martin Luther King when he was 15. She was impressed that King had already thought seriously about his future, and how he might contribute. I am trying to imagine what it was like for Dorothy Height, born in 1912, to dream of what her future as an African American woman would bring. She won an oratory contest in high school, with the prize of a four-year college scholarship. After getting accepted into Barnard, she was told by the Dean, right before classes began, that they had already reached their quota of two Negro students. Height went on to a B.A. and Masters degree from NYU, and from there, had an influential career, as an executive at the YWCA and for 40 years, as President of the National Council of Negro Women. Along with Gloria Steinem, Shirley Chisholm and Betty Friedan, Height helped found the National Women’s Political Caucus in 1971. She met with every President since Roosevelt, and upon hearing of her death at 98, Obama hailed her as the godmother of the civil rights movement, who witnessed “every march and milestone along the way.”

Photo: Martin Luther King, delivering his, “I have a dream” speech, August, 1963, Washington D.C.

Too Smart For Your Own Good

A straight guy I know, who has become a close (platonic) friend, really doesn’t get me. For one thing, he thinks my hair is too short, and he hates when I use more than three syllable words, because I sound too in-tel-luc-tu-al. When I was updating my online dating profile, he advised against listing War and Peace as my favorite book. “It’s a turn off,” he said. I don’t take his advice, but it gets under my skin, into that cold, dark place where I’m sure I would have found true love, if only I was….different.

Which brings me to the late, great Wendy Wasserstein. She died a few years ago at the tender age of 55, and the theater world mourned. Her birthday is Sunday. Through her many plays and essays, Wasserstein was so adept at capturing smart, ambitious women who found their romantic lives coming up short. After years of trying, she became a mother when she was 48 (and wrote a beautiful piece about it in The New Yorker).

Here’s a fragment from her 1988 Pulitzer-prize winning play The Heidi Chronicles, in which Scoop explains to Heidi (a girlfriend he could never commit to) why he’s marrying Lisa:

SCOOP

Do I love her…? She’s the best that I can do.
Is she an A+ like you? No. But I don’t want to
come home to an A+.  A- maybe, but not A+.

Michelle and Barack Have Great Taste in Art

I hadn’t thought much about White House art, until I read a piece in today’s New York Times that listed the paintings the Obamas selected to hang in their private residence, and the West and East Wings. Their choices were bold and modern, and included many well-known artists like Mark Rothko and Jasper Johns, and also an African-American abstract painter, Alma Thomas, whom I’m cramming to learn more about. Here are a few facts. She was born in Georgia, raised in Washington, D.C., and accomplished the near impossible, irrespective of race, becoming a successful artist during her lifetime. Alma was the first woman to graduate from Howard University with a Fine Arts degree, and the first African-American woman to have a solo show at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

This painting, Watusi (Hard Edge) by Alma Thomas, 1963, is now on loan to the White House.

The American Dream

BRENT is the fake name my father used to give when he phoned for reservations. He assumed this name because it was easier to spell than Braitman, and it didn’t sound Jewish. At the time, for my first-generation American parents living in the shadow of anti-Semitism, it felt like a safer way to connect with strangers. I longed for my own Wasp-y way out, and fantasized that my husband’s last name would turn me into a Wendy Brent or a Wendy James.

So much for make believe. There was a famous flesh and blood Brent, but she wasn’t a Protestant. Margaret Brent, born in 1601 was a Catholic, who fled England to the American colonies in search of religious freedom. I’ve been keeping tabs on her for my “Single Women’s Hall of Fame,” and was reminded of this yesterday, on the anniversary of the land grant she received on October 4, 1639, which made her one of the first Colonial women to be a landowner. She ended up acquiring almost 1000 acres, some of which she called, “Sister’s Freehold.” She was also a successful attorney and entrepreneur (practically unheard of for a woman) and most notably, 200 years before the organized call for women’s rights, Margaret Brent went in front of the Maryland Assembly and demanded the right to vote. (They said no.)

I Miss You, Molly Ivins

The warm, funny, insightful political writer, and all-around truth teller, Molly Ivins, would have been 65 yesterday, the perfect age to wade into the national health care debate. Not that wading was her style. She was good at cutting through the crap.

Ivins was an unapologetic “lefty,” and famously coined the name, “Shrub,” for George W. Bush, whom she first met while they were in high school. She was a towering presence, figuratively and literally, at 6 feet tall, born in California, raised in Texas, and educated in elite schools in the Northeast. She had a brief tenure at the New York Times, but it was not a happy marriage. She was stifled at the paper, and it drove her crazy. She returned to Texas to write, and made the legislature (or Lege, as she called it) one of her favorite targets.

Molly Ivins described herself as a “left-wing aging Bohemian journalist, who never made a shrewd career move, never dressed for success, never got married, and isn’t even a lesbian, which at least would be interesting.”

Aim High and They Just Might Name a Comet After You

My friend and artistic advisor, Miguel, who regularly visits this site, suggested I post something more upbeat. Maybe he’s right. Since returning from Colorado, I’ve been in heavy lifting mode, trying to reshape my romantic disappointment into a learning experience. Enough of that. Time to lighten up.

Though probably not the best way to realize this goal, yesterday, I decided to go to an early morning screening of The Hurt Locker, about a group of soldiers who defuse bombs during the Iraq war. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow, it’s a compelling and tense film, the best I’ve seen this year, but not exactly a mood elevator.

It’s good that I also found my way to Maria Mitchell, who was born 191 years ago on August 1, and  is America’s first noted woman astronomer. Mitchell was encouraged by her father at an early age to study math and science. In 1847, peering through a telescope on the roof of a bank where he worked as a cashier, she noticed an object in the night’s sky that didn’t appear in her charts. It was a comet, and her discovery brought international fame and a big career. Mitchell became Professor of Astronomy at the newly-formed Vassar College, she was the first woman elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and helped found the American Association for the Advancement of Women. (Look for her in my Single Women’s Hall of Fame.) The comet, C/ 1847 T1, is named “Miss Mitchell.”

I’m glad to be on the upswing.

The Single Ways of Mary Cassatt

As part of my ongoing search for candidates for this site’s Single Women’s Hall of Fame, and in honor of her birthday, I’m exploring the life of the 19th century American painter, Mary Cassatt.

I came across a 1999 article, “Cassatt’s Children,” by one of my favorite New Yorker writers, Adam Gopnik. It’s interesting and witty, as usual with Gopnik, and he admires Cassatt, but I was struck by some of his spinsterisms. Describing her remarkable ability to paint mothers and children, he writes of a “maiden-aunt gift for empathy.” As an old women, Cassatt became “crusty,” and when people made pilgrimages to see her, they might have “their heads bitten off.”

I’m going to spend more time with Cassatt, to see if this rings true, and get back to you.

(Painting: Woman Bathing, 1890)

The Fabulous Elizabeth Palmer Peabody

These last few days, I’ve had my head stuck in a book, “The Peabody Sisters,” by Megan Marshall, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction. It profiles Elizabeth, Mary and Sophia Peabody, three extraordinary women born into a prominent, yet impoverished New England family in the 19th century.

I’m fascinated by the eldest sister, Elizabeth, who was the intellectual dynamo of the clan and the most ambitious. She had a remarkable impact on the cultural landscape, carving out a luminous career as a writer, publisher, translator and educator, and established the first American kindergarten. Elizabeth was an impresario of sorts, and owned a bookstore, which served as a nightly “salon,” and hub for the great reformers and literary figures of the day. 

None of the Peabody sisters viewed marriage as their primary goal, although Sophia and Mary ended up with famous husbands (Sophia wed Nathanial Hawthorne, and Mary married Horace Mann, considered the father of public education). Elizabeth had her share of suitors and romantic longings (Nathaniel and Horace among them, and that’s a story for another day), but she vowed to “be myself and act”  and stayed single during her long and productive life.

On Mother’s Day: Why You Can Never Do Enough

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Marriage, Eudora Welty said, “Never Came Up.”

(“Sunday Morning,” photograph by Eudora Welty)

Before her literary career took off, Eudora Welty, one of the great writers of the 20th century, used to snap photos. She had a job as a junior publicity agent for  the W.P.A. (Works Progress Administration, started by Franklin Roosevelt in 1935, to jump start the economy) and traveled through rural Mississippi, taking pictures of people coping with the Depression. Continue reading »