Visionary Women

Visionary Women

Adult herstory
"Looking hard, trusting one's senses, letting the ingredients
speak for themselves; paying attention to how elements combine and
interact; allowing the meal in some senses to self assemble--all
notions strikingly similar to the ways Carson, Jacobs, and Goodall
approached their work. All were drawing upon deep reserves of
empirical knowledge, intuition, and an unerring sense of the natural
harmonies they uncovered through close observation. Gone were the
loyalties to received knowledge and preconceived attitudes. In their
place was a fresh respect for seeing the world anew and entering the
dance in which the physical and the firsthand were allowed to lead."
The early sixties were not the wonderful times a lot of people
remember or imagine them as. People who weren't redlined out of doing
so were self segregating into the new suburbs. While company men in
their grey flannel suits commuted to patriarchal, hierarchical
companies, their wives mostly served as support crew. Working if they
absolutely didn't have to was considered dereliction of duty. Food
was going the fast food and industrial agriculture route. Humankind
was poised to gain control over all of nature through chemical
"miracles" like DDT. Powerful nations had bombs expotentially
stronger than those that devastated Hiroshima. We kids practiced
hiding under our desks to shield ourselves from nuclear anhialation.
And life was a lot worse for people of color and other
marginalized groups.
Luckily not all adults were clueless then. Some dared to take
stands against the lock step thinking of the time. Andrea Barnet's
Visionary Women gives us potraits of four firebrands who were ahead of
their time. They bucked prevalent opinions and very powerful people
and organizations. They persevered in the face of strong opposition.
They saw larger pictures in an increasingly fragmented world.
After World War II chemical companies turned to peacetime
markets for insecticides such as DDT which they touted as perfectly
safe. Children followed spraying trucks on their bicycles. Only
Rachel Carson noticed that insects weren't the only beings dying. Her
Silent Spring cued the public in on the devastation those chemicals
unleashed.
Urban renewal was in full swing. Parts of cities with vibrant
communities were designated blighted slums, razed (displacing legions
of families and small businesses), and replaced with multi lane
highways or soulless high rises. In addition to organizing to save
endangered neighborhoods (including her own) from the wrecking ball,
Jane Jacobs wrote the paradigm changing The Life and Death of Great
American Cities.
Much was unknown about wild animals outside of the dreary
captivity of zoos. The sparse research on great apes in their natural
habitat involved questionable methods and was restricted to
quantitative data, often obtained by killing the subjects. Jane
Goodall was able to show that chimpanzees were distinct individuals
living in dynamic communities who had a lot more in common with humans
than the scientific community was willing to acknowledge.
Meals made from scratch were giving way to tv dinners and boxed
mixes. Small farms were giving way to huge agribusiness corporations
with all the alarming costs to ecosystems and human health
unrecognized. Quirky individual restaurants were giving way to the
bland standardization of fast food places. Through ventures ranging
from a restaurant sourcing local food to school gardens, Alice Waters
reminded people that you are what you eat.
Although these four women blazed paths in totally different
fields, their methodologies emphasized a holistic approach, research
based on observation rather than solely driven by ivory tower
theories, and respect for interconnectedness of beings and systems.
"Rachel Carson, Jane Jacobs, Jane Goodall, and Alice Waters
appeared at a watershed moment in the culture, presenting us with a
road map to the future that grows more relevant, if not more urgent,
with time. Their work continues to move, to inspire, and to stir us
to action, reminding us that the power of one voice can be
transformative; that change can and does begin with the local, the
particular, and the passionately observed; that the best ideas can and
often do from the bottom up. That one individual can make a
difference."
If we ever needed to be reminded of this it is now. I found the
book to be truly inspiring. I think you will too.
On a purrrsonal note, I chose to read the book now for a reason. The
governor of Maine has convened a group to work on restoring the state
economy. Needless to say it consists of the privileged and the elite.
There are so many voices missing from their dialogue--particularly
those of the marginalized. Its goal is to restore the economy to a
pre COVID-19 state of affairs. A grassroots alternate group, of which
I am a member, has risen up. We realize that things weren't peachy
keen before the pandemic, that COVID-19 exacerbated rather than caused
problems, and that the voices of those most harmfully impacted by
policies and practices need to be listened to. These premises are
very in line with the values of our sheroes from the book.
Otherwise Eugene got back. And we're having some of that muggy heat
that makes sleeping challenging. (Jules)
My daddy hooman is back. I love my daddy hooman. (Tobago)
A great big shout goes out to the awesome members of the new group.
Tobago and Jules Hathaway


Sent from my iPod