QuiBily : v.2

Women's History Month is March

I get funny looks - no, worried looks - when I metaphorically pump my fist for Women’s History Month.  When I proposed to a friend and school librarian at Black Hawk College to promote women’s history in March with some kind of ceremony or guest speaker, she wondered if that might be an obsolete issue.  After all, we are taught about Harriet Tubman and Marie Curie; we now read Jane Austen and Emily Dickinson.  The Suffrage and Feminist Movements ensured that women won equality.  And we might add that this decade has marked a new era in which women are the majority in colleges.

They wonder what I am concerned about.  I reply that equality is not yet achieved.  Women still earn three-quarters of what their male co-workers make.  I applaud the president for signing the Ledbetter act, but this merely changes the suing process to allow people who feel they are being discriminated again longer than 180 to file lawsuit.  First, a woman needs to take action - and obviously, many women are not aware or do not take action, and so the pay discriminationg will continue.

I reply that the many aspiring female scholars need a larger, more diverse pool of role models in history to draw from.  The reason I became so interested in women’s history is because it felt like I discovered treasures.  They didn’t teach me about an Anglo-Saxon Lady who led an army and defeated her land’s long-time enemies.  They didn’t teach me that a young black woman once bit the hand of a conductor who was trying to remove her from her bought seat to place her with the other blacks - and that she sued the company and won.

They only cover the Firsts.  I can’t help but sigh everytime I read in my Intro. to courses about women in the field who were the first of their sex.  And that’s it.  That is how they earned the ink.  They were token additions to make the field’s history seem multicultural.

Not all women are accomplished for simply being a woman in a male-dominated field.  We don’t need token women; we need complex figures - role models.  We need more fleshed-out women in history with which female students can identify with.  This will engage them and get them interested in history.  It was not until I found the female context that I became more interested in modern history - because there are, of course, very few in-depth accounts of women who lived before the 1600s.

Have you met you?

How many times have you read “hanging out with friends” in the hobbies section of a person’s Facebook page?  Virtually everyone confesses to enjoying the company of fellow humans.  Not surprising.  After all, the company of humans is more interesting than most other kinds of company.  I mean, trees are pretty and all – but that not-talking-or–moving thing gets old quick.  And, on top of mobility and intellect, humans are cleaner than pigs and dogs, so that’s a plus.

Of course, I’m grossly underestimating human relationships, but it is to make the point that I think we all underestimate our relationship with ourselves.

These days, technology makes us accessible to other people any where and at any time.

We have many ways for people to get a hold of us.  Most of us have school and personal email addresses.  Students on campus have two or three phone numbers: dorm, home, and cell.  When walking around campus, I rarely see a person walking alone without a cell phone in hand.

Isn’t this overkill?  We shouldn’t be starved for social interaction at all.  We cram together on the buses and file up along the sidewalks on our way to class, and, for students living on campus, we are piled one on top of the other in residence halls.

When surrounded by people on campus, it is crucial to have alone time.  Somehow, we’ve forgotten that.

Try this.  Take a short walk or just sit– and turn the cell phone off.  Listen to yourself, and some of your thoughts may surprise you.  After all, you are the most important person you know.  So I ask you:  Have you met you today?