Of all the women in history, I think I can identify with Catherine the Great the most. I read Carolly Erickson’s book many years ago and was really caught by certain similarities. She married at a young age to an abusive man. She had her sons taken from her (for different reasons than I, naturally, but both political). She was a survivor and saw love as a way to redeem the much needed emotional vacancy within herself. She also never remarried (it is possible she married Grigory Potemkin but it is not documented). When I had heard about the Russian TV series Ekaterina (the correct Russian spelling is Yekaterina), I sat down to indulge myself in the two season portrayal of this great monarch.
This photo is the inset of the book, “American Grit” Edited by Emily Foster – University Press of Kentucky
Women’s rights were of little importance to early settlers of the Ohio Valley. Survival in a territory inhabited solely by Native Americans, who’s land they had “purchased” (approved for passage by the Northwest Ordinance of 1787). Women were given the task of “dealing with them,” while their husbands were off clearing the land, building homes or foraging food. Of course missionaries were in the territory shortly before purchasing land was allowed and so the first “white” child to be born in the Ohio Valley was a German girl. Her name was Johanna Marie Heckewelder, born in Salem, near the Muskingum River on April 16, 1781.
Much like what I had read in the book “They Saw the Elephant,” about women travelling cross country to California for the Gold Rush – 1849, women made their living the best they could. In the case of Ohio settlers though, women and men were working together – for the most part – as a team. Unfortunately the division of labor meant that women would do anything that was needed but not so for the men. This means that men did not step over into “women’s” roles so it was not entirely equal. Early pioneer women might be called upon to “fell trees,” or build homes, or clear a path to their homes but they still had to cook the meals, give birth, and tend to the children at the same time. How they compared to the California women is that they figured out how to make money or barter for goods so that they could have food to put on the table for their children. The California women might not see their husbands for months on end (while they hoped to win the “lottery” at that time which was a chunk of gold). The Ohio women had their husbands nearby, though not always.
Constructing a Lean-to
It was interesting to note, but not surprising, that Depression was a big issue in this time period. Many times these settlers had purchased land in lots that might include 120 acres. This meant being close to town was not always the case. And, as such, these folks would become very isolated from a social life. They lived in fear of the Natives due to an inability to communicate and, after British soldiers left the valley in 1812, a wave of kidnappings and raids began (between 1812-1825), leading to the “Indian Wars.” If this weren’t enough to worry about, until their home was built, living in a lean-to meant being in fear of wildlife. Sometimes men deserted their families and women were left to figure it all out, on their own, with their children. In other cases, women had to become nurses or healers and had the additional task of figuring out which herbs would work best to cure what ailed their spouses.
A more formal lean-to
American Grit, is a book edited by Emily Foster (University Press of Kentucky), which is based on the letters and journals of Anna Briggs Bentley. Anna was a woman who came from Maryland and was raised in a somewhat affluent household. I say somewhat because her father, Isaac Briggs – a friend of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, just didn’t seem to be very good with money management or good ideas. When he died, he left the family deep in debt. Anna, the oldest child, and her husband left Maryland to try and establish a life in Ohio.
Anna and her husband, quickly learned how to establish roots in Ohio – which would have been hard for a woman used to servants. In their case, they were nearer to other people and she seemed to be very good at petitioning family or guests travelling in her direction to bring her things. She, like other women, also became handy in the art of bartering.
Anna’s family was of the Quaker faith and so, on top of building a homestead, she was eager to get this community going as well. What is interesting about this book is that while she was properly educated, she is poor at spelling and grammar which the editor, Ms. Foster, chose to leave in. Therefore, I found it quite humorous that Anna was chosen to be a schoolmarm for the children of their village. I imagine if any of her students went off to college, they would have been prepared for a rude awakening.
Geauga County couple
If you would like to read learn more about early pioneer life in Ohio or many other states around the country, there are a lot of books written about this. The Ohio History Museum, in Columbus, features many artifacts from this time period as well. The first chapter of the book “The History of Ohio’s Daughters” subtitled “Buckeye Women,” by Stephane Elise Booth gave a very good account of this time period. She mentions several women in this chapter and what they were able to accomplish as a Pioneer Woman in the Ohio Valley.
Adolf Hitler and Che Gueverra were both socialists with different views of what was right. Both hated art (unless it was about them) and destroyed art and artists. They both killed people for different reasons. The same occurred within the communist movement and amongst religious zealots in history who wanted to take control over people. They have killed people too for different reasons. All thought they were fair, right and just for doing so. Now we have the feminist radicals who have gone to the extremes in many ways. We are no longer just seeing “Women are better than men,” thought processes but witch hunts from the “MeToo” movement and destruction of art, “Baby It’s Cold Outside,” to fit their purposes. They are destroying men and art and even women who don’t agree with them for the sake of beliefs that they believe is right and just. This radical approach to turning the world around to their perspective, and this causes them to be incapable of looking at another side of things or listen to their instincts (not their ego). The “I am Right and You are Wrong,” is like with any radical thought process mentioned above, it is always “wrong,” as it is based on the ego, not a mature mindset and destroys society.
I felt it was important to put something together, as a memorial for women in Ohio’s history. I have been working on this for the last couple of months and then met up with a graphics artist that I was referred to. Samantha Vickers is in Cleveland and runs a company called Intentions Studio Design. We spoke on the phone and I explained how I wanted the emblem to look. I wanted something that would be formal and elegant as this was the style in our history when these women would have been around. It was important to get a design that these women would be proud of. She had it in one take and I was really surprised. You never really know if you are explaining yourself correctly until you see the finished product.
The women on this design have all passed. They are not ALL of the women in history in Ohio because you wouldn’t have been able to read the names if we did this. These are not even ALL of the women who have passed. This sample is based on women that I have written about or are preparing to do so. The names that are highlighted are women were “First” to achieve in the state of Ohio or wherever they became famous. The women that are considered for an Ohio Women’s History list are women who were either born in Ohio or those who made history here. For example, Mildred Wirt Benson (aka Carolyn Keene) was born in Ladora, Iowa and grew up there until she graduated college. When she came to Ohio, she began to write and eventually penned the “Nancy Drew Series,” or at least the majority of the stories. There are other women, like Natalie Clifford Barney who born here and lived here only 10 years. However, she went to boarding school in France and eventually stayed in Paris and ran a “Salon,” which was an intellectual gathering place for forty years. (She is not on the emblem but written about here on my blogposts).
If you click on Women’s History Store, above, you will see this emblem featured on products for men, women, youth and toddlers. This online store is based in Ohio. When you click on the products in the store, it will take you to the “EnlightenedGal” store that I created and this is through the manufacturer (CustomizedGirl). Whatever you purchase, Ohio Women’s History gets a commission from this. This is going to be set aside to pay for setting up Ohio Women’s History Project. This will be a non-profit geared toward educating and bringing awareness to our young people but also to adults. I have already given a lecture for the Westerville Kiwanis on four of the women in Ohio’s History. I would like to have contests for students, that we can feature here on the blog and will be an assignment for their history classes (If you are a teacher, please get in contact with me at ladyjatbay @ gmail.com to discuss). My way of educating will be focused on writing and lectures. The direction of this business will be based on what funds are able to be collected from the sales of these shirts in the store here.
Thank you for taking the time to peruse Ohiowomenshistory.com. Feel free to contact me about contributing an article or telling me a story about an Ohio Women in your history. They don’t need to be famous, just a remarkable person who transformed the people around her.
Jeannine Vegh, Founder of Ohio Women’s History Project
(November 22, 1925 – September 30, 2014: Sagittarius/Artemis)
Forget Amelia Earhart, who was the first woman to fly solo across the ocean, Jerrie Mock was the first woman to fly solo AROUND THE WORLD! Yet no one really knows about her, save for flying enthusiasts. In fact, I wonder if we would even know about Amelia, had she not died in mysterious circumstances and become a legend. And as the author Nancy Roe Pimm points out, in the book “The Jerrie Mock Story,” when Jerrie made this harrowing journey, fraught with many obstacles along the way, too many other important events overshadowed a first for women. Would this have happened in today’s society? Probably not. Women who were the first to do things in the past, were heroines but it was not quite as fascinating then as it is now. Books were rarely written about them and when they were, they faded into the back of the shelf, until now, when so many women are trying to dust off their jackets or create them from scratch.
Nancy’s book did justice to Jerrie’s flight because she really makes it exciting for a person to read and feel that they are a part of the journey. While it is a biography for young readers, I didn’t get the sense that it was for a kid. I mean I didn’t feel like one reading it. It actually reminds me a little bit of a Nancy Drew story, except the heroine isn’t fictional and there is no mystery, just a lot of complications which create suspense. The latter is what captivated me about Jerrie’s story. I had to keep telling myself “She makes it, don’t worry.” I was able to read the story in one day which is the nice thing about a 113 page book for young readers. It reads like a short story. Nancy also puts little snippets of information in the book, right when Jerrie is in that part of the world, so you can learn additional information. I had no idea that there were once seven wonders of the “Ancient World.” Only one is still in existence. I knew there was “seven wonders of the world,” but not an ancient world. She also provides a timeline at the end of the book, which is helpful for someone wanting to write a blog article and not wanting to search through the book all over again for dates.
It is also interesting because Nancy wasn’t shy about telling us about the disgruntled relationship between Jerrie and her husband Russ. You can imagine that whenever a woman is in the limelight, it is going to frustrate their partnership on some level, especially in 1964. I wondered where this was going and the author was careful with this by noting that while Jerrie was upset, she pointed out that she also missed her husband. I can empathize with the situation. If it weren’t for Russ pushing Jerrie and remaining focused on her journey, she might not have been the first woman to fly solo around the world. Many times when people are on a long trek to become a first at something, they often have coaches to keep them on track. This generally causes a lot of friction. While I have never been a pilot, I have ridden up to sixty miles on a bike and with a lot of people. I know how you can get upset with your coach when you are tired, cranky, hungry, physically exhausted; naturally you want to slap them sometimes. It can be a testimony of a really good relationship when it can withstand such pressures as she went through like this with her husband. When I looked at the timeline in the back of the book however, Jerrie and Russ would end up divorcing fifteen years later. Since her daughter would have been around 18 years old at that time, she obviously waited until all her children were adults, which was the “right” thing to do at that time.
Her husband Russ was apparently more competitive about this journey than Jerrie. As you read the story, you find that Jerrie would have liked to have spent a lot more time in some of the places where she landed. It was her first time to be around the world (which also makes this solo flight all the more spectacular in that she didn’t practice) and she really wanted to take in a lot more scenery than she was able to. Had Russ not pushed her, she may not have won the race. I have not mentioned before but at the same time she was in the air, a woman from California was also doing the same thing. She was Joan Merriam Smith who was 27 years old to Jerrie’s 39. Joan was taking the exact same flight that Amelia Earhart took and she did succeed but only returned to California a few days after Jerrie. Unfortunately, Joan died in an airplane crash one year later.
So what kind of obstacles did our heroine endure? At the onset of her flight, just as she went into the air from Port Columbus, she hears the traffic controller state that this will be the last we ever hear of her. What a terrible thing for him to say but thank goodness, she had a strong constitution and didn’t let this sway her. If that weren’t bad enough, every leg of the journey, some idiot journalist was asking her stupid questions about Amelia Earhart – even wondering if she were afraid she would die too. Just like today, the poor woman had to suffer the endless throngs of insensitive reporters who have never learned tact and decency among celebrities. In Cairo, she was stalled by a ticket agent who didn’t believe she had her own plane and wouldn’t let her through. Naturally, this would be straightened out after a couple of phone calls.
The technical issues began immediately. First there was a radio transmission failure as well as brakes that didn’t work. Unfortunately, it sounds as if the latter were probably sabotaged. I thought it was quite funny to realize that the radio transmission for long distance was a cable of 100’ which Jerrie had to drop from the plane, allowing it to hang, in order for it to work. Another obstacle was assuming she was landing in Cairo, and as her wheels touched the ground she was greeted by the military who weren’t too excited to see her. This was because she flew into a secret Air Force base accidentally. Mid-way over the South China Sea; there was the smell of gas. This required switching gas lines and it sounded like turning the engine off for a bit, which was a very risky undertaking. I kept wondering why things kept going wrong, though I also realized this was 1964 and planes were different than.
The nice thing about every stop along her journey was how wonderfully she was treated in each of the countries she would land in. I was the most surprised about this as I couldn’t imagine this going so well in today’s difficult world. Of course, each stop included ambassadors, statesmen, people who had been alerted long before she left home and who had already approved her stop over. Her journey was charted out by a retired military general and between him and the other people, including her husband, who were anxious to have a successful voyage; the trip seemed as if it was meant to be.
The funny thing about choosing to write about Jerrie for this blog is that I am afraid of flying. It is no accident that I purchased this book, well over a year ago, while meeting the author at Ohioana book festival. I had put off reading it because I was afraid I would be sick as I usually am when I am anywhere near an airport. I haven’t even flown since 9/11, which I never make a secret about, though I began getting sick on flights way before that. Fortunately, as I read this book, I felt very calmed by her spirit, which I felt was captured in this book. It reminds me of a couple of flights I have been on in the past, where the pilot was very re-assuring and as a result made the journey very enjoyable. I know if I had been in Jerrie’s shoes, hearing all that stuff about Amelia Earhart would have grounded me for sure. I would have panicked and seen it as an omen – that the topic kept being brought up. That kind of negative talk can cause many people to self-sabotage but Jerrie Mock was undeterred because she was that kind of woman. She was strong, brave, and yet modest and confident. Unlike Amelia, she didn’t have that egotistical side to her nature. While she relished the limelight, she wasn’t caught up in it. I don’t see this as a coincidence. Jerrie was very careful along this journey and did not take any risks with weather. She trusted her instincts, which is pointed out a couple of times in the book. On one such occasion, pre-solo flight, the trip she turned down with other pilots ended in a disaster.
What I see that appears to compare quite frequently with the Ohio women that I write about, is the spiritual side of their natures. When I think of all the women I have read about, from around the world, until I took on the task of writing about the Ohio Women’s History, I didn’t even think about the spiritual component as I read their stories. Yet, time and time again, I continue to read and to have the sense that the Gods were working in sync with them. Perhaps it is our culture, here in Ohio, or the authors of the books or a little of both. Grandma Gatewood, Jerrie Mock, Sarah Worthington, and others, I feel as if their journey was guided by a higher power. Was it them or were they chosen to do what they did?
Post-script: There are plenty of YouTube videos about Jerrie Mock and even another book that I learned about while watching a video. “Three-Eight Charlie,” was written by Jerrie Mock and more recently was enhanced as a special 50th anniversary commemorative edition. The newer version is thanks to graphic designer Wendy Hollinger and artist Dale Radcliff who along with publishers Phoenix Graphix included maps, weather charts and additional photos.
I am including this video below which is an interview with Jerrie Mock by Carol Ann Garratt for Women of Aviation Week 2014. Jerrie died later that year on September 30th in her home in Florida; at the age of 89. She was survived only by her daughter Valerie, the last of her three children (I assume there were grandchildren as well but I am thinking of those who were alive when she took this voyage).
This book is one you don’t devour. You take your time, stirring, simmering and seasoning as if you are making a pot of soup or stew. Sophia is a Virgo, which is most of my astrological chart, except the first dominant three. I sensed a grounded woman almost immediately. A person who has taken her time and made the right choices; which led her down a path that would make her a very happy woman. As a Leo, who has made all the wrong choices, very impatiently and innocently, when you have done these things, only then can you truly appreciate someone who is smarter than you. Patience really is a virtue.
Liberace was a “flaming fag,” as we used to say in the 80’s. He wasn’t married to a woman, he didn’t try to hide being gay by the way he dressed or acted on stage or in real life. While he didn’t come right out and say “I am gay,” or in his day – a homosexual because saying gay would mean he was giddy or happy, it is safe to say that he wouldn’t be upset that we all know he was gay. Likewise, we could safely say this about Oscar Wilde or Lord Byron and countless others who didn’t take great pains to make sure we didn’t know.
On the other hand, focusing on Cary Grant’s love life or Katherine Hepburn’s or Spencer Tracy’s or even Eleanor Roosevelt’s is inexcusable. It is disrespectful of their families, their husbands and wives, of their name and of their legendary status. If something is not written in their will or if they have taken great pains to hide their love life; than it is none of our business. Yet magazines and their sensationalist journalists take great pains to “expose” them as if they have abused children or animals and need to have their life paraded around the town square for the entire world to see and know.
Life was different in their time period. People had class and very high expectations of themselves and others. Men and women dressed elegantly and went out to dinner with gloves on and hats. They wore fur stoles or full length coats or capes that were left in a cloak room with a “hat check girl.” They drew nicotine from long stems and cocked their heads back when they let out the smoke in a very graceful way. They ate lavish meals and watched performances, which included full orchestras with singers and maybe dancers as well. When they left, they went onto parties or home or somewhere else. The story ended there.
Recently, Scotty Bowers a celebrity pimp at 94 years old, has decided he needs to ruin the reputations of some really wonderful people that we all grew to love and adore. These were people whom we romanticized and fantasized about when we thought of their relationships, or their movies, or their place in office. The meaning of legendary is someone that no one can replace. It is someone who was unique, a valuable contribution to the world, stellar, intelligent, and larger than life.
When they are then exploited for being gay behind closed doors, you are taking away that legendary status by turning them into a common person. You are saying that they had flaws like the rest of us. That beneath that smile was nothing but lies. You are taking away the image we have of them and turning them into nothing more than a Jimmy Saville. And for what purpose? Why do we need to know who was gay and who wasn’t gay? Who does this help? Do we need to meet a quota in today’s society to validate ourselves in the lifestyle we are now living?
“Women He’s Undressed,” sounds demeaning just hearing the title. As I watched this documentary about an Australian designer by the name of Orry-Kelly, I felt embarrassed and uncomfortable as he began to rat out Archie Leach’s lifestyle and then tell us that Cary Grant took great pains to shut him up before he died. Naturally, it is hard to have any respect for Orry-Kelly; as a result of watching this. I began to understand why Cary walked away from him because he was a spineless prick; like most people in the fashion industry. Always out to stab people in the back and then curtsy, while blushing on their way out the door. It’s supposed to be seen as charming and yet it made me want to vomit; which is why I got out.
As I am in the psychology world now, I am equally insulted by fools who focus on the fact that Freud was a cocaine addict or that Jung screwed his clients. None of this was taboo in their time period because they were the fathers of psychology and had not yet determined ethics and laws that are relevant today. Doctors handed out cocaine, heroin, and many other substances that are considered illegal today but weren’t then. It is because therapists or psychoanalysts did what they did that we now know better. But to focus on their behaviors that were inconsequential in their day, takes away from the valuable contributions that they made to psychology.
When I watch an old film, I don’t want to think about the fact that he or she was a dyke or a fag. I want to think about their wit, their je ne sais quois. Yet when someone puts something into my mouth, I can’t get rid of the taste of it. The memory is stuck. When we see these people on screen, it is important to leave them with their clothes on. We want to keep their voice resonating in our head. We want to recall their walk across the room. We want to envy their wives/husbands, children and imagine what it must have been like to be in the room with them.
If these people were alive today, more than likely they would sue the rags that printed them just as Tom Cruise used to do with National Enquirer. Now all magazines and newspapers, the Internet as a whole, seem focused on becoming trashy, smutty, tell-alls who have nothing better to do with their life than to ruin others. When you do this to a dead man, you are essentially spitting on their grave and that of their kin. Allow these people to rest. Allude to their behind the scenes arrangements but really and truly, if they aren’t Jimmy Saville, let it rest. Keep them a legend, a mystery, a well-loved hero/heroine.
In her book, “A Wartime Memoir: Hungary 1944-1945,”Alaine tells about a life changing year that instead of being her downfall, became her life’s purpose. Sitting ducks with a changing guard, from Russian to German on an on-going, what seemed like a never ending basis, she travels from Transylvania (then hoping to remain with Hungary) to Csákvár, in Hungary and back again. In the end, you can imagine the frustration in knowing, if she had never left, her life would have remained simple an innocent.
What is beautiful about this book is that she is not talking like a psychologist but instead, goes back in her mind to re-live painfully traumatic experiences at the age of 19, as if she were that age once more. As a psychotherapist myself, I get the sense that she probably never went through her own course of treatment. This is because she continues to repeat over and over “I do not remember…” This is typical of a sexual abuse survivor or someone who was horribly traumatized at a young age and blocks the exact details of the trauma from their mind, for their own “assumed” well-being. Ironic, as she was a psychologist yet even today, people in this profession are closed off to doing their own work. It is important so that they can properly support others without transferring their own pain onto the client or confusing the client’s story with their own. I am not condemning her though because this was more typical of this time period. I grew up with Hungarians (refugees from the revolution), none of whom went into therapy and all of whom went through some of their own harrowing ordeals. Not least of which was fleeing their beloved homeland.
Alaine was born in Kolozsvár, when it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (at this time known as the city of Cluj-Napoca). Now it is Romania and it was in 1944-1945 as well. This was a time of unrest between the Romanians and Hungarians, power struggles on the Romanian part that included violence and discrimination against the Hungarians who lived there. Alaine’s father gave her this male name because of two reasons. One, he did not know French and so unaware that it was a man’s name but Two, his only purpose was finding a name that was not able to be translated into Romanian.
At the onset of 1944, Alaine, at 19, was married to her childhood sweetheart János. Within a few months into their honeymoon period, he gives her gonorrhea. Amazingly, but not surprisingly, it is at this point when he detaches from her and begins to be an emotionally abusive husband. She has the luck of being a strong woman, though terribly naïve. His mother, Mami, happens to work for the Esterházy family, who are of noble origins. It is here that they will go to live and because of him that she follows the family as they escape into Hungary to live and work at another estate, which will be the beginning of the end of Alaine’s life as she knows it. In Csákvar, what seems to bring some peace and safety for a short time, ends up being the front lines, which means constant harassment or torture from either the Germans or the Russians. For women, as with all wars, she and other villagers will be gang raped on what appears to be a daily basis, and at this time, she is under the impression that her husband was executed. The most impressive lines that she writes of her first account of abuse goes like this:
He put the photograph [of she and her husband] on the nightstand and laid me down on the bed. I was afraid he would not give me the picture. When he was done, he took the picture into his hand and showed it to me again…
When she writes, she is not writing like a writer in this book. She states facts, over and over. There are no pictures drawn and yet there is a story being told. Fuzzy memories are re-told and sometimes they are not even in order, so you have to re-read to catch yourself. It is as if you are sitting with her and she is telling you a story. When I got to the line “When he was done,” it came at me so quickly; I had to read it a few times to let it register. “Oh, okay,” I thought, this is how she is protecting herself and the audience. Even though she is not talking like a psychologist, she is consciously protecting throughout the book.
At some point, days, maybe a month or so later, she is escorted to a cellar, with 79 other Hungarians, who are doing their best to survive. They will go through days or months (you are never sure of the timeline but the book is only one year), of not bathing, very little food and at one point no water, ritual defecating and urinating (they can only go outside to do this during the 10 minutes of ceasefire which occurs daily at the same time), as well as lice and natural body odors. She is only with Mami and her dachshund “Filike,” who she holds at her breast, under a coat which no one notices until the end of her time there.
Alaine does spend a lot of time talking about blood and guts and waste, more than any other writer I have seen when it comes to war zones. One does wonder how people use the toilet during these times. When she mentions herself running away from a gang rape sequence, she talks about running through the snow with a slip on and blood being caked on her body and in her panties. She mentions being in the cellar when she pulls her shirt away from her body and a woman notices the skin of a sore coming with it. She is telling us about how you just keep going, no matter what, becoming oblivious to your own vanity.
The war is at the end, in 1945, when this part of her story comes to a close. She returns to Budapest, still without her husband, to be reunited with family; who will then return to Kolozsvár. She is saved from being labeled a whore, as most women will be in this time period, because her family are good people and she finally denies what happened. By this time the gonorrhea and the life conditions she has just endured have taken its toll on her body. She is hospitalized for some time before she will recover and get some of her life back. The irony is that she will never be able to bear a child and this was the fault of her own husband. The sardonic twist is the realization that all those Russian soldiers had went home to their wives passing on her venereal disease to them.
She and János will part ways and soon she will meet her second husband Miklós Mészöly, who went on to become a famous Hungarian writer. Alaine will go on to become the founder of the first children’s hospice program and win two different awards. She receives the Tibor Déry Award in 1992 (for this book, which was written in 1991) and The Middle Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary in 2001. Alaine’s husband dies in 2001 and she will pass six years later.
Post-Script: What is horribly frustrating about the book is the writing and translation. Albert Tezla is the translator and having read a great number of translated books from several different countries, this is pathetic. You would almost think he didn’t speak English because the sentences come across as broken and unedited. I believe he is translating word for word, rather than trying to put it together in some organized fashion. It is also possible that Alaine was never edited since Albert was not either. I think this is embarrassing to both the writer and the country itself. While I am not a prolific writer myself and certainly need to be edited, I am self-published and have no professional acclaim to add to my repertoire. I was disappointed to say the least. However, this story, edited or not, annoying with the redundancy or not, needed to be told. What I have noticed when I find anything about women in history, this is so often the case. It is sad because I can’t recall any time when I have seen the same about men.
Back in the mid-80’s, I lived and worked in LA and was trying to get into modeling. I was not naïve to the “casting couch” as I had read the non-fiction “Hollywood Babylon” (published in 1959) as a teenager and knew this was a dirty world. My last time to try and make a go of it was with an agency looking for older models (I was 26-ish by then). They were off of Laurel Canyon and Ventura Blvd. It was in a building across from the famous newsstand which may or may not exist anymore (do people still buy trade magazines and newspapers?). The guy who ran this agency worked with his wife, a beautiful Swedish/Norwegian looking blonde lady who was very pregnant with their first child. He took me and another younger woman to Malibu and we spent the day doing photos for our portfolios. We were in bathing suits and had to endure two Mexican men ogling us from over the side of a cliff we were under. We also had to endure this man/photographer telling us about his days with Playgirl magazine (when he was a model) and the size of his male part and how great he was.
Holier than thou Hollywood continues to gain power over our society with their extreme left thinking to over compensate for their anger at the right. Hypocritically speaking out about tolerance and freedom of speech and then firing someone for just that. It is okay for Samantha Bee to disrespect a president’s daughter and call her a F-cking C-nt and for Kathy Griffin to want to decapitate a world leader, or for Joy Behar to trash Christians. All “comedians” but when a well-known, controversial, funny woman Roseanne Barr says something she is fired from her own TV show. Let’s look back at a couple of her more interesting quotes:
A Frequent Blog of Devotionals Inspired by A Course in Miracles, A Course of Love, The Way of Mastery, Choose Only Love--Plus More . . . with Celia Hales - https://www.amazon.com/author/celiahales
This book is one you don’t devour. You take your time, stirring, simmering and seasoning as if you are making a pot of soup or stew. Sophia is a Virgo, which is most of my astrological chart, except the first dominant three. I sensed a grounded woman almost immediately. A person who has taken her time and made the right choices; which led her down a path that would make her a very happy woman. As a Leo, who has made all the wrong choices, very impatiently and innocently, when you have done these things, only then can you truly appreciate someone who is smarter than you. Patience really is a virtue.
What is beautiful about this book is that she is not talking like a psychologist but instead, goes back in her mind to re-live painfully traumatic experiences at the age of 19, as if she were that age once more. As a psychotherapist myself, I get the sense that she probably never went through her own course of treatment. This is because she continues to repeat over and over “I do not remember…” This is typical of a sexual abuse survivor or someone who was horribly traumatized at a young age and blocks the exact details of the trauma from their mind, for their own “assumed” well-being. Ironic, as she was a psychologist yet even today, people in this profession are closed off to doing their own work. It is important so that they can properly support others without transferring their own pain onto the client or confusing the client’s story with their own. I am not condemning her though because this was more typical of this time period. I grew up with Hungarians (refugees from the revolution), none of whom went into therapy and all of whom went through some of their own harrowing ordeals. Not least of which was fleeing their beloved homeland.
She and János will part ways and soon she will meet her second husband Miklós Mészöly, who went on to become a famous Hungarian writer. Alaine will go on to become the founder of the first children’s hospice program and win two different awards. She receives the Tibor Déry Award in 1992 (for this book, which was written in 1991) and The Middle Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary in 2001. Alaine’s husband dies in 2001 and she will pass six years later.
Holier than thou Hollywood continues to gain power over our society with their extreme left thinking to over compensate for their anger at the right. Hypocritically speaking out about tolerance and freedom of speech and then firing someone for just that. It is okay for Samantha Bee to disrespect a president’s daughter and call her a F-cking C-nt and for Kathy Griffin to want to decapitate a world leader, or for Joy Behar to trash Christians. All “comedians” but when a well-known, controversial, funny woman Roseanne Barr says something she is fired from her own TV show. Let’s look back at a couple of her more interesting quotes:
Jeannine Vegh 