Is this a new day, or what?! Check out these two headlines, both from this morning:

First Embryonic Stem-Cell Trial Gets Approval from the FDA – WSJ

Obama Ends Funding Pan for Abortion Groups Abroad – Yahoo

(Thanks, Virginia, for the heads up!)

As Barack and Michelle (hey, are we all still on a first name basis, now that they are official?) settle into 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, I find myself fascinated by every move they make.  And it’s hard not to make comparisons.  Everyone from Jezebel to the WSJ has compared Michelle O to Jackie O (try here, here, and here) and the fashion mags are all gaga over her style, but it seems to me there are some far more interesting–and more substantive–historical analogies going on.

Check out these excerpts from a March 1933 AP article reported by Lorena Hickock, about Eleanor Roosevelt’s first day as First Lady.  The article is titled “New ‘First Lady’, Made Solemn By Inaugural, Lays Plans To Simplify White House Life; To Cut Expense”:

“The crowds were so tremendous,” Mrs. Roosevelt added softly. “And you felt that they would do anything – if only someone would tell them what to do.

“I felt that particularly, because when Franklin got to that part of his speech in which he said it might become necessary for him to assume powers ordinarily granted to a President in war time, he received his biggest demonstration.”

Mrs. Roosevelt moved over to one of the wide windows and stared thoughtfully out across the White House grounds at the Virginia hills, softly outlined against a grey afternoon sky.

“No one,” she said, “at all close to people in public life today can fail to realize that we are all of us facing extremely critical times.

“No woman entering the White House, if she accepts the fact that it belongs to the people and therefore must be representative of whatever conditions the people are facing, can light-heartedly take up her residence here.

“One has a feeling of going in blindly, because we’re in a tremendous stream, and none of us knows where we’re going to land.

“…Neither Franklin nor I would want to do anything that would detract from the White House dignity, which we both love,” she said. “But I believe things can be made a good deal simpler without that.

“It should be done, I think, to save the time and the strength of a man as busy as a president must be. And now, of all times, there is no occasion for display.

“…My feeling about the White House is that it belongs to the people. Their taxes support it. It is really theirs. And as far as possible they should be made to feel welcome here. They shouldn’t have the feeling that they are shut out.

“I realize, of course, that there are limitations. There are times when one can’t receive visitors. There are times when a family has got to have privacy. After all, we’re living here, you see.

“But the lower floors, away from our living quarters, will be open to the public even more, if I can manage it, than they have been in the past. And I want the visitors to be given every courtesy.”

Interesting, given the way the Obamas opened the White House to public visitors on Day 1.  For a good counter to the Jackie-Michelle comparison, check out this historically-informed little piece in Newsweek, “Why Michelle Obama Is Not the Next Jackie O”.

And on a less serious note, how’s this for bit of useless yet kind of interesting First Lady trivia: Eleanor Roosevelt was the only first lady taller than Michelle Obama (who stands at 5’11).  Eleanor topped her by an inch.

(Thanks to Marco for the heads up.)

In the continued spirit of sharing sentiments about the historic day on Tuesday, this afternoon we bring you (via Shira Tarrant!) the one and only Wendy Griffin.  After a checkered past as a college drop-out, diamond courier, Off-Broadway actress, folk singer and cocktail waitress, Wendy received her Ph.D. at the University of California Irvine, in the interdisciplinary social sciences with an emphasis on sex and gender. Her book, Daughters of the Goddess: Studies of Healing, identity and Empowerment, was the first scholarly anthology on Goddess Spirituality, and her scholarly articles in Pagan Studies are published internationally.  She is the Chair of the Department of Women’s Studies at California State University Long Beach and the co-chair of the Pagan Studies Group for the American Academy of Religion.  Her remembrance below gives me the serious chills.  Here’s Wendy! –Deborah

In 1953, I went to Washington D.C. to see Eisenhower’s presidential inauguration. I had entered a national contest for students and written in my “25 words or less” essay with great enthusiasm. I remember my older sister saying smugly that she wouldn’t hold her breath until I won.

But I wasn’t really surprised when I won; I expected to with all the confidence of an 11-year old white girl whose world had not yet been limited by her gender. It wasn’t until years later that I realized my winning probably had more to do with being in the same class as the daughter of the corporate sponsor rather than my essay.

Each of the 35 winning students got to take an adult along, and I choose my mother. There are special things about that trip that I still remember. I used my mother’s movie camera and used up almost a whole reel filming clouds out the airplane window. I climbed the Washington monument and heard Spike Jones and his band play in a night club. I remember the inaugural parade and how cold it was. At the inauguration festival that evening, I used my own box camera to take photos of Marge and Gower Champion as they danced across the big stage. I was little for my age, so I managed to weave in and out of the crowd and squeeze in up close so I could get a better shot of John Wayne, who was my hero that year. Apparently I gave someone a push and stepped on his foot, because I was suddenly lifted up in the air and moved unceremoniously to one side.

My mother later told me it was Vice President Nixon’s foot I stepped on. She was mortified. Years later, after Nixon’s resignation, she told the story with great pride.

I came home and put together a scrapbook of my adventure. I still have it, 56 years later. But what I remember most about that trip never made it into the scrapbook.

The students whose essays had won the trip were selected from across the nation. None of them knew anyone else, except for me and the sponsor’s daughter. The group was largely middle class and all white except for one girl who was African American. She was just a couple of years older than I was and she had brought her mother along too. But Washington D.C. was still segregated in January of 1953. The hotel management took one look at her and her mother and refused to give them rooms. The trip organizers then refused to allow us to be separated and all the reservations were cancelled. It felt like we had to wait around for hours, but finally, we ended up going across the state line and finding a motel that would take us all.

We had been looking forward to seeing “history in the making,” as my mother said. She promised it would be something I would always remember. Well, the capital of our country gave 35 students an unexpected education.

Yesterday, as I watched the inauguration of Barak Obama as the 44th President of the United States and the first African-American to hold that position, I shed a few tears. I hope my sister contest winner was watching too.
—
Wendy Griffin
wgriffin@csulb.edu

During the inauguration, I sat at a table with the staff of the National Council for Research on Women (pictured left).

Our remembrances from the day are now posted at their blog, The REAL Deal, right here.

I’ve seen books that teach you how to apply lessons from private life to leadership in the office, but this one  takes leadership skills from the office and applies them to the home. The whole premise of Jamie Woolf’s Mom-in-Chief: How Wisdom from the Workplace Can Save Your Family from Chaos is that “being a mom means being a leader,” and the foreword is by none other than CEO of Working Mother Media Carol Evans.  While I have yet to pass judgment on whether business strategies that work in the workplace transfer to parenthood, what I’m most interested in here is the way the author has fortuitously capitalized on the Michele Obama moment to promote her book–a book that was finished, I am sure, long before Obama won the election.  Ingenius, I say.

Here’s from the promo material:

Michelle Obama Has What It Takes to Be Mom-in-Chief:
5 Lessons in Leadership That Mothers Can Learn From the New First Lady

Michelle Obama has stated that her focus when her husband takes office Jan. 20 will be serving as “mom-in-chief” to her daughters, Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7. Leadership expert Jamie Woolf, author of Mom-in-Chief: How Wisdom from the Workplace Can Save Your Family from Chaos (Jossey-Bass; 288 pages; $22.95) examines how Obama will lead her family through this challenging transition.

When President-elect Barack Obama moves into the White House, his aides and supporters will celebrate his historic achievement. His wife and kids will be glad he’ll finally be home for dinner. 
Michelle Obama, a high-powered lawyer and executive administrator, values family life and says she will strive to give her daughters as normal a life as possible despite their being in the pubic eye. While she intends to use her platform as first lady to be an advocate for women’s issues, military families and national service, her priority will be her children, not policy–especially in the first transition year.

Jamie Woolf, whose book teaches moms how to use “best practices” from the workplace to make family life run more smoothly, says that adopting business leadership strategies can make the difference between a smooth and a chaotic transition for any family. Here are the lessons she draws from Michelle Obama:

Lesson 1: Motherhood is a leadership job: By calling herself “mom-in-chief,’ Michelle Obama sends a message that being a mom means being a leader, giving her job a status not usually afforded mothers. By celebrating her role rather than apologizing for it, she connects the notion of leadership beyond the walls of corporate suites and presidential mansions to the homes of average parents. The best leaders, like the best parents, strive to provide the proper conditions in which others can grow and reach their highest aspirations.

Lesson 2: We learn skills in our professional lives that enrich our work as parents. The most effective parents don’t leave their professional skills at the office. In her career in law and public service, Michelle Obama has used many of the same skills she’ll use in her role as mom-in-chief, including conflict resolution, communication, multi-tasking, time management, crisis management and team building. Like the best business leaders, the most effective parents inspire without pushing their own agenda, nurture without micromanaging, encourage without creating over-the-top pressure, and expect the best without ignoring the inevitability of failure and the joy of learning from mistakes.

Lesson 3: Set big-picture goals. With two young children and a puppy to corral, and state dinners and sleepovers to host, the first lady will face relentless demands on her time and patience. Effective leaders keep their eye on the long view, looking beyond the task at hand to the greater purpose. By articulating her big-picture goal–to put her kids’ needs above other obligations–Obama is more likely to avoid getting bogged down in endless niggling details. She understands what all great leaders understand: that her actions and choices today have long-term effects.

Lesson 4: We need help with work/life balance: Michelle Obama has at times been the major bread-winner in her family, and she was vice-president of community affairs at the University of Chicago Medical Center before she took a leave to join her husband on the campaign trail. She knows intimately the juggling act working mothers perform every day and has said she will advocate for policies such as family leave, childcare access and better health care–the issues that allow women to better balance work and family life.

Lesson 5: We need to take care of ourselves. With our endlessly competing priorities, taking care of ourselves is the first thing to go. Many mothers say making time for exercise, let alone a manicure, feels indulgent. Obama has made it clear that being an effective mom-in-chief means finding the time to rejuvenate. And when we respect ourselves, we model an important lesson for our children. “Hey, we’re the only ones who can take care of ourselves,” she told Ebony magazine, “and it makes us better lawyers, better mothers.” Good leaders keep perspective.

I’m not yet a parent, but hey, all this sounds pretty wise to me.

So as a build-up to the Fem2.0 conference on February 2 in Washington DC, Fem2.0 is hosting another Twittercast this Sunday at 10pm–and it’s one I’m hoping to join (if I’m back in town!).  Everyone is invited to participate. The topic this time: Why Should Men Be Feminists?

But wait…what the bleep’s a Twittercast, you say?

Twitter, again, for those not yet in the know, is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users’ updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length. When you join Twitter, people sign up to follow your tweets, and you sign up to follow other people’s tweets. The tweets are instantaneous – people can tweet and respond to other people’s tweets in real time. With millions of overlapping Twitter feeds, Twitter is an incredibly powerful social networking tool. I love it and I hate it at the same time.

If you want to participate on Sunday and have a Twitter account, you can send the Fem2.0-ers your Twitter name, which they will gather into a list an distribute, so everyone will know who to follow for the Fem2.0 Twittercast.

If you do NOT have a Twitter account and are curious, you can sign up for one here: http://twitter.com/home

And if you hate Twitter and “tweets” and all the rest, feel free, of course, to bypass this post.

It’s a question on all of our minds as we wait and watch to see what the Obama Administration will tackle first. And the feminists are getting busy. Do check out the live blogging going on at RHRealityCheck Live Blog @ 3pm eastern tomorrow–on what happens to be the 36th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Sounds like it’ll be a vigorous and provocative conversation.

On the heels of Gwen and Tonni’s awesomely informative post-inaugural post on religion, I’m thrilled to bring you this Q&A by GWP reader-now-contributor Allison McCarthy, a graduate of Goucher College who was recently accepted into the Master of Professional Writing program at Chatham University.  Allison’s work has previously been published or is forthcoming in magazines such as The Baltimore Review, JMWW, Girlistic, Scribble, Dark Sky, and The Write-Side Up.  Winner of the 2007 Maryland Writers Association Short Works Contest, she is currently a features and profiles writer for ColorsNW.  Here she is!  -Deborah

Susan Campbell, 49, is a journalist for the Hartford Courant, the oldest continuously published newspaper in the U.S. and author of Dating Jesus: A Story of Fundamentalism, Feminism, and the American Girl.  The book, published by Beacon Press in January 2009, uses humor, history, and memory to great effect in relating the author’s personal evolution of faith and politics.  She currently lives in Connecticut with her family and sometimes feels mortified that she wrote a memoir, which she says is a “vain thing to do,” and then has to talk about the memoir, thus rendering her “doubly-vain.”  Campbell recently spoke to Girl With Pen about her experiences with writing, feminism, and her ever-contentious relationship with Christianity.

GWP: How did you come up with the title Dating Jesus?  Were there other working titles attached to this project?

SC: It went for a long time without a title at all – I’ve never been able to write a headline and I suck at titles.  I don’t get a lot of great thoughts in the middle of the night, but I woke up laughing because it was almost like I was dating a boyfriend that I didn’t like very much.  The Jesus I was introduced to as a girl wasn’t very human; he was very judgmental and unhappy, fairly sanitized, and in retrospect he mimicked a lot of the adults around me.  He wasn’t very radical at all and this is not a person I would get along with much as a friend, let alone a boyfriend or someone I would worship.  But I tried to hammer myself into that box, anyway.

GWP: You include a lot of footnotes, which seems to be very popular among post-modern memoirists.  What was the significance of this literary device in your novel?

SC: As a trained fundamentalist, you have to back up everything you say with Scripture.  You have to have supporting documentation.  I knew this was going to be read by people like me who want proof.  It became a verbal tic and I couldn’t quit doing it!  I thought I stole this technique from a memoir about the family who came up with Sweet and Low.  The footnotes in that book were often as funny as was what came in the text.  Originally, my intent was pure, but I found it was great fun to put these irreverent footnotes in.  I don’t think of myself as irreverent, but that’s what I’ve been told it is, so I’m going to stick with that.

GWP: In the book, you mention the role of Elizabeth Cady Stanton in criticizing the gendered roles of contemporary Christianity.  What other feminists influenced your eventual shift from fundamentalism?  Do you currently identify with any communities of feminism?

SC: When I was growing up, the only feminist I knew was Gloria Steinem and I only knew what I read in the media.  I was a fairly wide reader.  I eventually met her and tried on her aviator glasses.  I read Betty Freidan and as a young woman, I thought she made a lot of sense.  I knew enough at that age not to identify myself as a feminist because it was a dirty word.  The stereotype is so silly.  I studied Womanism at Hartford Seminary.  I think that some critics of mainstream feminists complained that it’s a movement for white, middle-class women and it overlooks the challenges faced by other demographics.  That’s a valid critique and I think even the early feminists who sprang from the abolitionist movement were women of leisure who had the time and money to devote to this very important cause, but were also looking particularly at their own lives and not necessarily to women on a different socioeconomic rung.  At this point, I don’t know what school of feminism I would say I belong to.  I’m a feminist, but I’m uniquely aware that the movement as a whole has sometimes not paid enough attention to everybody.  I think there have been time periods where a lot of people left off the bus.

GWP: You currently subscribe to, in your words, a “floater” version of religious expression.  Can you explain your use of this term?
SC: Whether or not I meet someone’s idea of what is Christian is immaterial to me.  If I’m not Christian enough for you, that’s your problem.  My own definition of floater is that I believe in the basic premises of Christianity.  It’s the one religion I’m most familiar with and most comfortable.  On the other hand, it drives me crazy!  I don’t care if you’re baptized, sprinkled or skip it altogether.  I think it’s important to look out for people with less, and money spent on elaborate churches could be put to better issues, like homelessness here in Connecticut.  You tell me how important it is to have your stained glass windows or new altar as opposed to having no room in homeless shelters when the National Armory is being opened to warehouse people as a last-ditch effort!

GWP: Are Christianity and feminism compatible, in your experience?

SC: Absolutely – Jesus was more of a radical than most people admit!  Some of his closest advisors and friends were women.  But hey, if I was a member of the ruling class, and in some ways I am, I would fight to keep this position as well.  I understand those who cling to patriarchy and the notion that only men can serve in the clergy.  Whatever little power I have, I want to hang onto, too.  But it’s wrong.  Both feminism and Christianity are sufficiently large enough to leave a lot of room for interpretation.  When you try to define something as large as either one, the definition goes on for pages and pages.  Arguing dogma means stuff doesn’t get done and things don’t change because we divide ourselves over minutia: who’s a feminist, who’s a Christian, etc.

GWP: What were your motivations in writing this book?  How did your previous experience as a journalist affect your progress?

SC: I belonged to a writer’s group with Wally Lamb.  It’s scary how nice he is.  Even though he’s so nice and supportive, you never want to read your stuff after Wally has read his!  I was working on a novel that basically stinks.  After reading the same chapter over and over, I got so sick of the novel that for a while, I wasn’t taking anything to the group.  One night, I thought, “I’ve got to write something.”  I sat down and wrote three pages about my baptism, which became the beginning of this book.  I have been writing about my feminist upbringing for the Hartford Courant for years, to the point where people were getting sick of it.  Readers in my group thought this could be a longer essay.  So I started writing and the essay became a chapter.  Then it got out of hand and became a book.  My training as a journalist came in handy.  I never agonized over my keyboard thinking I had nothing to say.  It was a joy to write.  I wrote all day at the paper and came home to write a home.  I’m not a tortured artist.  It’s just fun to do!

GWP: What has the response of readers been to “Dating Jesus” since its publication?

SC: It’s still fairly fresh, so I haven’t gotten a lot of negative responses.  It’s been kind of gratifying because a lot of different religious backgrounds tend to restrict their members from full citizenship from the kingdom of God.  I’ve gotten emails from a wide variety of people, very detailed and personal letters.  They’re seeing someone else talk about dissatisfaction with their religious upbringing and know they can talk about their own, too.  I so respect their stories and I want to answer them quickly and fully, even if that’s not always possible to do.  It takes guts to email someone you’ve never heard of before.  I’ve not done it.

GWP: What current writing projects are you working on now?

SC: Very little!  Mostly, I’m trying to keep up a blog on the book’s website (www.datingjesus.com).  Some days, I’m more successful than others.  I want to start on a biography of an early feminist in Connecticut, Isabella Beecher Hooker.  Her sister was Harriet Beecher Stowe and it’s really hard to compete when your sister wrote a book that started a war.  She was considered the “pretty little sister,” but she really was a woman of substance and I’d like to write about her.  Other than that, I’m keeping up with my columns and my head above water!

–Allison McCarthy

LINKS:

Dating Jesus: A Story of Fundamentalism, Feminism, and the American Girl
www.datingjesus.com

Live blogged from Caroline’s on Broadway

By Marco Acevedo (for accompanying pics where here it just says “IMG”, visit Marco’s front page post over at Open Salon, from which this is poached – with Marco’s permission, of course)

10:52 a.m.
I’m at our table in Carolines with my wife Dee (aka Girl w/Pen) and a happy, mimosa-fueled crowd of feminist confreres watching as the bi-Presidential caravan heads out from the White House. (This is unfortunately taking the form of an after-the-fact dispatch, since I don’t have Internet access here).

We’re here at the invitation of The White House Project (“a non-partisan organization committed to enhancing public perceptions of women leaders and advancing a richly diverse, critical mass of women into leadership positions.” Although Lizz Winstead, co-creator of The Daily Show, declared herself pointedly partisan during her opening monologue. Her comment on the news that Cheney will be in a wheelchair for the inauguration: “Cheney supposedly hurt himself while moving. I guess he did let the doorknob hit him in the ass on the way out.”)

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Lizz Winstead, co-creator of The Daily Show

11:08 a.m.
Talk at the table: Who is acting President in the ten minutes between the swearings in of Biden and Obama? Seriously, ten minutes is a long time. A lot can happen. Why aren’t they simultaneous?

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My babe, Girl w/Pen

11:19 a.m.
The Carters are announced. The brand strikes up some rousing Sousa (what’s happening to me? Wearing a flag pin, tearing up to Sousa… must be middle age.)

11:22 a.m.
The Clintons are announced. The Carolines crowd goes wild. Conversation around the table: the symbolism of yellow (gold?) and purple, the vestiges of royal ritual. Everyone on the podium seems to be wearing a jot of one color of the other. Hillary particularly striking in her purple coat.

11:24 a.m.
Sasha and Malia, appear, all smiles and regal pace. Carolines erupts again. Whoops at the sight of the Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin. Regal presence.

11:31 a.m.
Cheers and gasps for Michelle resplendent in glittering yellow. Boos and hissing for Dubya as he ambles along on his perp walk. I can’t help thinking he looks alone. Interesting that the First Lady doesn’t accompany the outgoing President.

11:39 a.m.
Obama appears on the flatscreen. Cheers, applause, a scattering of Carolines attendees rising to their feet. Comments at table: the office has already aged him, and he hasn’t even been sworn in. But he looks filled with the moment, calm and accepting.

11:44 a.m.
President-Elect Barack H. Obama is announced. Thunder and cries. Closeups on the screen of black men and women in the crowd on the mall.
I feel the moment expanding.

No more time stamps.
The rest is a blur of fluid motion quickly setting as rock-solid history.

Hugs and involuntary shout outs during DiFi’s impassioned opening speech. Her words about the nonviolent roots of this triumphant moment are superimposed to dramatic effect over the visage of our outgoing President.

Boos and guffaws at the appearance of Reverend Rick Warren for the opening prayer. Loud comments throughout the prayer, hisses at its close.

Aretha blesses,caresses and weaves “My Country ‘tis of Thee” in vaults and spires over the mass of humanity carpeting the Mall. Not your white grandma’s Kate Smith.

Noon.
Obama becomes President of the United States by Constitutional decree, although he hasn’t yet taken the oath. The moment passes under the soothing and introspective tones of Yoyo Ma and Itzhak Perlman.

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Yoyo Ma at the Moment. Grace.

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The Girl w/Pen happy and proud

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Boy w/Pin

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A jumbotron in Times Square

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Obama Generation

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For posterity

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My cold fingers, the Flag and the Square

(crossposted with permission from Open Salon)

I was so excited bout it all this weekend, I painted my nails red and blue. Yep, I really did.

Off to Caroline’s on Broadway now to watch the festivities with a bunch of friends and colleagues. It seems there’s so much to say, and no words in which to say it.

ENJOY THIS HISTORIC DAY!