Beau Peep Notice Board
Beau Peep Notice Board => Outpourings => Topic started by: Diane CBPFC on March 06, 2010, 04:32:17 PM
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...is not as much fun as I thought it would be when I volunteered to be Toastmaster for the first time at my local Toastmaster's meeting this Tuesday night.
I am considering Agnes Macphail - Canada's first woman MP - but she was a racist and believed in eugenics. THen there is the lovely UK Emmeline Pankhurst who seemed to be a bit of an arsonist and alienated two of her own daughters and was a war monger.
Many women wanted the vote for good reasons – others only wanted the vote to cancel out the votes of lower class or non-white men. So I got a bit discouraged...
Looking further back at ancient Egypt because I happened to watch a show on TV last night about the women Pharaohs - but then you have to remember slavery and the whole penis worshiping thing.
I am at a loss.
Then I thought this could be a fun project for the Beau Peep gang!
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You won't be surprised when I suggest Libbie Custer. She was to be a widow for over fifty years and made a living by writing several books about her life with George Armstrong. Woe betide anyone who was critical of her husband---in her mind, he was as gallant and brave a soldier who ever lived. Such was the respect for her, that no book which WAS critical of Custer was ever published until after her own death in 1933.
Bonnie Parker (of Bonnie and Clyde fame) is also a hugely fascinating woman---gangster's moll, poet, psychopath!
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Diane,
I don't think there's anything wrong with choosing someone who has left their mark on history in a positive way but also has less savoury ideas. You don't have to agree with their views to talk about their lives, in fact it could make the presentation more interesting. Not all things that make history are for the good and there aren't too many saints in the history books of either gender methinks.
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Well yes Calvin, but I was thinking of being a promoter for the figure - such as wearing the Pankhurst badge and ribbon and a straw hat - that was why I was discouraged - I thought it would be a quick study to grab a suffragette and promote her but then didn’t find one I really liked.
Now this Molly Parker...I will have to google her poems
This is fun eh?
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What about Emma Thompson?
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oh goody, ringside seat for Malc waking up to this one 8)
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What about Emma Thompson?
;D ;D ;D Gets my women's vote!
Bessie Coleman.
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What about Emma Thompson?
Lost a little bit of tea down the nose on that one.
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What about Emma Thompson?
I fink you is abosultely rite in this choice Jack. ave anozzer beer.
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What about Emma Thompson?
Do these women have to be dead, Diane?
No...no, no, no....wait, Malky!!!..........
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Tick... tock... tick... tock...
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Emma Thompson was just on the biography channel a couple of nights ago - a whole hour about her. Did you know she was married to Kenneth Brannagh? Now she is married to Willoughby. Emma has fantastic teeth.
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Emma Thompson was just on the biography channel a couple of nights ago - a whole hour about her. Did you know she was married to Kenneth Brannagh? Yup! Knew that! Now there's a bloke who needs a slapping! Now she is married to Willoughby. Emma has fantastic teeth.
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Poor Willoughby (whoever he is).
I think you should go for nearly famous women, such as women who lived in the shadows of their famous husbands or brothers, such as the brilliant Clara Schumann, a child prodigy who gave her first piano recitals at nine years of age and was touring by eleven years old. Her maiden name was Wieck, she bore seven children, one of whom died as a baby, another inherited her husband's mental illness and died in an insane asylum. As a musician she was regarded as much more accpmplished then her more famous composer husband Robert, but basically subjugated her own career to his while he lived. She was very courageous and you should look her up on Wiki if nothing else. She was also very opinionated on other composers work, as she was every bit their equal.
However, she once famously said (and you won't like this): "I once believed that I possessed creative talent, but I have given up this idea; a woman must not desire to compose — there has never yet been one able to do it. Should I expect to be the one?" and though she did compose pieces as a younger woman she gave up in her later years.
Nowadays her own works are highly regarded and increasingly played, so maybe it will serve to illustrate what many men are afraid to say in public. Sometimes women are wrong.
Another one of my pet projects is Gwen John, sister of Augustus John and lover of the sculptor Rodin, who studied under James McNeill Whistler at the Academie Carmen in Paris but is almost unknown today as a painter in her own right.
Gwen has always come across to me as a little nutter, who formed attachments to others too quickly and became fixated on them, men and women. She was apparently not too hygienic and lived in what would nowadays be considered squats, or sometimes even lived rough in fields. You can readily see her these days as a Goth, or (as they're called now) Emo, black fingernails, etc...
Like Clara, her career was willingly subordinated to others, and that was their lot in life, and perhaps their tragedy.
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It turns out when you are the actual toastmaster there is not too much time for you to speak unless you really want to - it is mostly introducing others up the the podium - I got by just by being polite.
Thanks for your thoughts on women.
They call them cold-blooded killers
they say they are heartless and mean.
But I say this with pride
that I once knew Clyde,
when he was honest and upright and clean.
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Diane - how about highlighting the important historical moments in time when the lot of a woman was made easier?
I don't actually know myself when the first dishcloth was invented, or the vacuum cleaner made, but with Google, I'm sure it wouldn't take much research.
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Not to mention the tampon with the indented base,
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Not to mention the tampon with the indented base,
I'd forgotten about Mince.