events

Last night I went to a 90th birthday party for NCRW’s founding president Mariam Chamberlain (pictured here, in blur, being toasted by a current Mariam Chamberlain Fellow). I felt the love, and I waxed nostalgic for my days doing program work for this amazing network.

And now I’m here at the opening plenary of NCRW’s annual conference, in the Kimmel Center just south of Washington Square Park, the conference I used to plan.

The room is packed. NCRW president Linda Basch takes the podium noting that this year, an election year, they are focusing on what they’re calling The Big Five: economic security, education, immigration, violence, and health. She talks about “that pernicious 16” – the 16% of women in corporate officer positions, the 16 women in Congress. (And I just learned that women are also 16% of the military, 16% of police and fire departments, and 16% of law firm partners. Eerie, that same number each time. What up?!)

Catherine Stimpson (aka Kate to friends), Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences at NYU and former NCRW board chair, had emergency dental surgery yesterday but is looking sharp. She’s up there doing the host’s welcome, speaking of this network’s sense of “gritty realism” and “unreasonable hope.” Next comes NCRW Board Chair Eleanor Horne, who reminds the crowd of our need to remind everyone not here that even though a woman ran for prez not all is hunky dory. She asks participants to not just “confer” here these next few days, but to go out and act.

Nicole Mason, Director of Research and Policy Initiatives at NCRW, who I know has been eating breathing and sleeping (or rather, not sleeping) this conference for the last year is last, and now here we go. The next bunch of posts are snippets from the opening plenary, “Stir It Up: Women’s Activism Reframing Political Debates.”

Girls Write Now, my #1 favorite organization to get girls writing, is holding its Spring Reading at the Tribeca Barnes and Noble on June 8. Join me there? For more on what this amazing org is up to, check out their spring newsletter. (And if you share my love for this org and are feeling generous, donate here!)

Last night I went to one of those fabulous book parties that remind me why I love New York (and believe me, I needed the reminder; it had been a hectic week and this city often wears me down). The fabulousness was not the food (which was delicious) or the space (which was mind-blowing), but the people. It was fabulousness of a feminist variety.

The party was hosted by Gloria Steinem and in attendance were trailblazing women like Suzanne Braun Levine, Alix Cates Shulman, Joanne Edgar, Mia Herndon, and Amy’s longtime writing partner Jennifer Baumgardner, who beamed in the back as Amy was properly celebrated. I promise to share thoughts about Amy’s book Opting In: Having a Child without Losing Yourself which is why we were all there, of course, in another post very soon. But first let me just share that Gloria introduced Amy as “the smartest person I know.” If that isn’t a compliment, I don’t know what is.

…which I sadly could not make sounded awesome. Basically, GWN mentors came together with teaching artists from Teachers & Writers Collaborative for Ladies Night, an evening of readings. Readers included GWN mentors Grace Bastidas, Mary Roma, and Erica Silberman, plus teaching artists Nicole Callihan and Sheila Maldonado. For upcoming events from these folks, check out the GWN calendar, here.

So yesterday I attended a really great intergenerational conversation hosted by Woodhull, housed in the lovely conference room at In Good Company, a place whose company I’d love to one day keep. More on that event soon! But in the meantime, I wanted to let folks know that a special GWP discount may be available for this weekend’s nonfiction writing retreat, “Raise Your Voices: An Intensive Nonfiction Writing Retreat for Women”, where I’ll be teaching along with Kristen Kemp and Katie Orenstein. For more on that, please email me (address below) or Elizabeth Curtis, ecurtis@woodhull.org. Just don’t forget to tell them GWP sent you in order to receive the discount.

This weekend I participated in The Great Saunter–a walk around Manhattan, sponsored by an environmental conservation group called ShoreWalkers.  Their motto is “See Manhattan at 3MPH!” Full disclosure: My crew and I walked from 42nd St to the northern most tip, then took the subway home.  But still, it was an amazing chance to just walk and talk and talk and walk and take in the Hudson River.  This here is a pic of that little red lighthouse underneath the George Washington Bridge.  There’s a kids’ book about it, and I’m here to say the lighthouse really does exist.

Lots of people have been asking me about last weekend’s Council on Contemporary Families conference, which I blogged about here. For more coverage, check out the Chicago Tribune and the Christian Science Monitor. Veronica blogged a bit about our blogging workshop here. And if other GWP readers who attended happened to blog about the conference, please do post your links in comments, to share!

Just wanted to share this pic of Mariam Chamberlain at her 90th birthday party with the young folk who worked with her over the years at the National Council for Research on Women. Amazing woman, I swear. (Thanks, Gwen, for taking pix!)

I’ve spent much of April saying yes to saying no. After a grueling (but wildly fun) March, April 1st commenced my month of slowing-it-down. I said no to coffee, no to many events, and no, ultimately, to all the things that distract me from getting my writing done. But when my colleagues at the Women’s Media Center sent over a comped invite to a panel at The Paley Center for Media last Thursday, I jumped. Just couldn’t pass up a chance to hear ladies like Gloria Steinem, Suzanne Braun Levine, Mary Thom, Patricia Mitchell, Carol Jenkins, and Marlene Sanders pontificate on women, media, and politics, “From Bella to Hillary,” as it were.

Listening to the panel was a great cap to the speaking I’ve been doing of late with my fellow WomenGirlsLadies. It confirmed and inspired.

Confirmed: Women in this country have a long, long way to go. (We’re 71st in the world in terms of representation of women in positions of political power; we occupy a whopping 3% of the clout positions in media over here, oh boy.) The program included a clip from an early women’s movement documentary, “The Hand That Rocks the Ballot Box,” and much of the cry then is the same as it is now. As Lily Tomlin proclaimed in another clip from a 1992 PSA that was shown, women in this country have a better chance of getting into another galaxy then Congress–where, in 2008, we’re still only at 16%.

Inspired: Gloria Steinem spoke of the variety and differences within the women’s movement, and how we’re still dealing with a lack of full and nuanced tellings when it comes to telling the story of that movement’s past. “First a movement is a hula hoop,” she said. It’s ridiculed by the press, and then it quickly becomes Not News. What was missed in that cursory coverage, she noted, was the role women of color played in shaping the movement of the ’60s and ’70s. Take Fannie Lou Hamer, a founder of the National Women’s Political Caucus and the first woman to come forward against forced steralization. While Hamer is remembered as a Civil Rights movement champion of voter registration, her role in the women’s movement is underplayed.

“Whitemiddleclass became like one key on the typewriter, used to devalue the women’s movement in the media at large,” said Steinem. And that’s the version we next-generation feminists imbibed wholesale too, I might add. I’m looking forward to the forthcoming scholarship that’s bound to unleash a wider range of tellings, scholarship I know from various sources is well underway.

During the Q&A, I asked panelists for their thoughts on how we might capitalize on the outrage women feel about how Hillary has been treated by the media. It’s an outrage transcends candidate support and transcends age. No clear answers emerged, but all agreed that we need to channel it into harnessing votes against the hardly-woman-friendly John McCain. I look forward to figuring that out together as the general election nears.

This just in:

The Castilleja School, the 100-year-old middle and high school for girls in Palo Alto, is bringing globally recognized business, scholars, and national political leaders to its campus for a symposium on “Power,” on Saturday, May 3rd. Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice; President and CEO of Hewlett-Packard, Mark Hurd; Former Clinton Economic Advisor, Laura Tyson; Princeton’s Dean of its Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Anne-Marie Slaughter, will be among other distinguished speakers presenting and discussing their views of leadership and power shifts in the 21st Century.

For more info, contact Dana Sundblad, 650-740-7748, Dana_Sundblad@Castilleja.org

(Thanks to Jolie for the heads up!)