A blog about New York City, my books, and my cats. Mostly.
Welcome to the couch little guy. We just got back from the vet, Buddy yowling the whole time. He’s lost a pound, which isn’t good and I’m totally surprised. I would have sworn he gained a little. But it’s too soon to panic. Both the cats got cat nip and now I’m going to relax on the couch, doing easy work like answering email, looking up stuff, etc., with the Twilight Zone marathon on in the background.
Taking it easy is always better with cats.
I’ll be back later today with a more New Years-y post, hopefully, but I just wanted to rave about this documentary I watched about Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and their fight to get women the right to vote. It’s called Not For Ourselves Alone. I missed I don’t know how much of the first half, I came across it channel surfing, but I recorded and watched all of the second half. Mesmerizing and mind-blowingly well done. I know, women’s rights, blah-blah-blah, but trust me, it was absolutely riveting.
And we didn’t get the vote in their lifetime. It didn’t happen until freaking 1920. Can you believe that?? It took that long to figure out that we deserve that same right? I’m doing all this research about singing and music and composers and I realize that all this time that I’m writing about, women couldn’t vote. And they could barely talk in public, much less sing (most of the early choral societies were all male).
We always think of America as so forward thinking, but over and over, if you do the research, we’re just not. We weren’t close to the first to give women the right to vote. I forget how many countries were listed in the show, but dozens, including the Soviet Union, gave women the right to vote before we did. Look how many other countries that have already had women leaders.
Anyway, watch it. It’s great. Trust me. And thank you Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton (and thank you Ken Burns and Paul Barnes and everyone else who worked on this). The filmmakers really capture how much work and heart and intelligence went into this battle. I can’t imagine summoning all that it must have took. Anthony and Cady Stanton should be huge national heroes, celebrated often, with many books and movies. They should be as big as George Washington and anyone else who fought for freedom and independence.
I was walking through Grand Central Station on my way to a cocktail party … oh yes, I am such a sophisticated NYC woman, I go to cocktail parties, ha! Do you ever think back to when you were a kid, imaging yourself doing grown-up things and now here you are?
Anyway, I was WAY early, so I stopped and took photographs of the balcony where I had set up computers all those years ago and introduced some New Yorkers to the internet.
A closer, less moody look.
An old friend from college, Sandra Whaley, uploaded a picture she had taken of me to Facebook. I love this picture! I can’t remember ever curling my hair so I asked her what the occasion was. Maybe it’s graduation? I graduated in 1978. That’s my camera (which was stolen a couple of years later). And I’m smoking! (I quit in 1986. I hope I quit soon enough.)
I just checked the Best Friends website to see if something had happened that I didn’t know about, but no.
“From what we at Best Friends know of the way Michael Vick has related to the animals he abused, the answer is clearly that he has “simply rediscovered the pocket.” Best Friends took 22 of Vick’s 48 seized dogs and the only contact we’ve received from Vick or his representatives was by way of some overtures from his agent, one of his attorneys and a PR firm specializing in reputation rehabilitation. They were interested in some public glad handing that would put Vick in a favorable light with the NFL, which at the time was still considering whether or not to reinstate him. We declined.”
“Best Friends has never heard from Michael Vick or any of his representatives inquiring after the health or well being of any of the 22 dogs that we received from his fighting ring.”
Their full statement is here. My statement: fuck you Michael Vick. The picture is of Georgia, one of the dogs rescued from Michael Vick. If you’d like to donate to help out George, click here.