April 17, 2021
A terribly frustrating writing day, where I churned out 3000 completely useless words. I'm going to bed in disgust, but my bad mood won't last long. It is spring here, with snow yesterday and warm sun today, a juxtaposition that New England does with such endearing impertinence. The birds are twittering and the coltsfoot is up, turning the road shoulders bright yellow, and tomorrow is another day.
I have saved this particular picture for just this sort of a mood. Peter calls it "March," and while we’re more than two weeks over the line into April, it still seems to me a perfect representation of the giddy confusion of a working household coming to life in a Maine spring.
[Photo “March,” by Peter Ralston, whose contact info is in the notes, for those of you who have asked.]
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Notes:
Peter is here. If you stop in, say hi. He and his wife are both lovely: https://www.ralstongallery.com/
So far it seems it is all women who are responding tonight in these first ten minutes. I just watched the PBS NOVA program title Picture a Scientist which is about discrimination of women in science. An excellent program I can relate to as a woman engineer (that is not an oxymoron) who graduated from M.I.T. For example, I was showing my M.I.T. class ring to a small group and one man said. "Oh, I didn't know spouses could have class rings." One think I love about M.I.T. is when the "Study on the Status of Women Faculty at MIT" was published by the female faculty with all the scientific rigid they put into their own fields it was acknowledged by the President of M.I.T., Chuck Vest, with the quote: 'I have always believed that contemporary gender discrimination within universities is part reality and part perception. True, but I now understand that reality is by far the greater part of the balance.' At M.I.T. you take the scientific evidence, acknowledge it and then act on it. When I was there the student population was about 6 or 8% women, now it is 46%.
One reason I found the campaign slogan "Make America Great Again" so distasteful is that I didn't want to have to live through breaking the glass ceiling again. Been there, done that. I recommend the program even though ironically a major sponsor of NOVA is David Koch....
Please know that today’s “useless” words are far outweighed by the thousands of words you’ve given us to put this complex world in perspective. We are lucky to receive your words.