"If I Could Live for a Week in Any Time Period" by Delsora Lowe

When I was thirty-five, I finally graduated from college. I had an Associate Degree, earned at age nineteen, but then I went on to get married and have children. I was old enough to know what I wanted when I worked on obtaining a Bachelor Degree to finish my last two years of college, while holding down four part-time jobs and raising two young teens.

Margaret Sanger 1922

I fought with the administration of the college, and finally won the right to declare an independent major in Women’s Studies. My thesis was on women’s roles in history and sociology (my loosely-based minors to shore up my self-designed major) using, in part, my grandmother’s work with Margaret Sanger in New York City for my final thesis. I can’t remember how old my grandmother was during her time in NYC, but I will guess 20-25, so she would have been doing this work in around 1915-20.


Now many years later, my mind is foggy on the details and I cannot find the tape recording I made as my grandmother related her experiences, nor can I find my thesis (I think they are in a box in the basement somewhere). But one thing I do remember is my grandmother’s interview and her shrugging and stating her experience was no big deal. To me, a feminist and a student of women’s history, it was the biggest deal ever to know my grandmother, Dolly, was a huge part of the women’s movement history in our country.

My Grandmother "Dolly,"
Charlotte More Meloney, around 1915-20

So, as someone who has never claimed to be brave, I would love to not only put on my brave face but be able to follow my grandmother around for one week during that part of her life. She was a dynamic and brave woman, a huge role model in the way she led her life. I remember when I interviewed her, how she told me when she died and came back in another form, she hoped to be a nurse in Appalachia, riding horseback through the mountains to care for people. She would never marry. I told her that now she could be a doctor, the dream she gave up, and be married too. She shook her head and vowed to stick to her first plan of reincarnation.


My grandmother had attended college as a pre-med student, one of eight women in the course. Four went on to med school. Four married and raised families. My grandmother was in the latter group. She divorced when my mother was twenty-five. My grandfather went on to marry three more times. In Dolly’s mind, and in line with the era in which she lived, she had to make choices.


To me, going back in time and living that one week alongside my grandmother, would be an exhilarating adventure. I can’t imagine the hard work, the stress, the fear of doing work that was considered illegal at the time, all to help give women a choice in what they did with their own bodies. But I know in my heart, I could not stand up to the work and dedication shown by women like Margaret Sanger and my grandmother. Maybe it is my own fear to go out on a limb. Maybe in my younger days, I may have been that brave. I’d like to think so.

Suffragist March, 1913, Washington, DC.

I recently read a romance, Escape to the Biltmore, by Patricia Riddle Gaddis, based in the era during the time my grandmother was probably weighing her college and work options. The story is about two doctors who meet and end up working together. The heroine, an unmarried female who knew

By Patricia Riddle Gaddis

her choice to become a doctor precluded her from ever marrying. The hero, a doctor who was a product of his environment and the era in which he lived. It’s a romance, as I said, so you can guess what happens in the end. But up until then, Gaddis does a magnificent job of portraying how each character handles the life they have chosen and the societal parameters imposed on each.

Reading this novel, brought back all the memories of my grandmother’s stories. I wish she were still here today, to see that she could have had both—a career she was passionate about that would meld with the chance to include having love and a family.


Here’s to my grandmother and all the women who paved the way. And here is to generations of women who follow my generation, who will continue to work and love hard, as they make this world a better place in which to live. And here’s a salute to Women’s History Month.


P.S. Next time we have this topic, remind me to tell you about my actress aunt turned military pilot during WWII. Another brave and inspiring woman.

Delsora Lowe writes small town sweet romances and contemporary westerns from the mountains of Colorado to the shores of Maine

~ cottages to cabins ~ 

~ keep the home fires burning ~

Lowe’s family visits to Colorado are the inspiration for an upcoming contemporary western series, Cowboys of Mineral Springs, book one to be released in April 2019. And her daughter’s wedding and her son’s home, both on the coast of Maine, provided plentiful ideas for the Starlight Grille series (released in 2017 and 2018).

LINKS:

Delsora Lowe FB Page: fb.me/delsoraloweauthor
Delsora Lowe Website: www.delsoralowe.com
Delsora Lowe Amazon Author Page: http://amzn.to/2nRx1Bs 
Delsora Lowe Books2Read Author Page: https://www.books2read.com/ap/8GWm98/Delsora-Lowe
Delsora Lowe Author Newsletter signup (only sent out when there is news): http://www.delsoralowe.com/contact.html
Delsora Lowe Author Blog; http://www.delsoralowe.com/blog
Goodreads Author Page: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/16045986.Delsora_Lowe
BookBub Author Page: https://www.bookbub.com/profile/3829267554
Escape to the Biltmore -Buy on Amazon - https://www.amazon.com/Escape-Biltmore-Patricia-Riddle-Gaddis-book/dp/B07FWDFQHV/


Photo Credits: 

Margaret Sanger 1922: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MargaretSanger-Underwood.LOC.jpg; Library of Congress Prints and Photographs division, reproduction number LC-USZ62-29808.

Suffragist March in Washington DC 1913, Women suffragists marching on Pennsylvania Avenue led by Mrs. Richard Coke Burleson (center on Horseback) U.S. Capitol in background (Library of Congress)

Future Hope

Hi everyone! I am YA author B A Binns , writer of contemporary and realistic fiction for teens. My tagline tells you what I am about - Stories of Real Boys Growing Into Real Men - and the people who love them. 

This month I take on the topic of hope.

You know, that thing that's supposed to spring eternal.

Hope means different things to different people. People buy lottery tickets because they have hope. Or they head for the racetrack because this time their pony will come in. An HEA (Happily Ever After) is hope to romance readers.

The poet Maya Angelou said, "God puts rainbows in the clouds so that each of us — in the dreariest and most dreaded moments — can see a possibility of hope." I see that rainbow when I look at new people. Just looking at any brand new person gives me the kind of hope romance novels only strive for. That's why I can't talk about hope without talking about the next generation.


This new person is super special, my personal hope for the future: Miss Noelle Harmony, age one month. My first grandchild. She means hope for the future to me, because God, the originator of planned obsolescence, has created her to be my replacement part.

No, she'll do even better than just replace me. I have every hope she will surpass me.

She is tiny right now. Just under 5 pounds at birth. And yes, she still spends most of her time sleeping. When she isn't eating.  And she can even multi-task, eat and sleep at the same time if you put a bottle in her mouth.

You could probably tell she's my granddaughter by my sappy expression while I feed her (if I weren't smart enough to bend my head so my face is in shadow.

You can also tell because my current WIP is a children's book.  She may not know it yet, but she's going to have lots of adventures in lots of stories.

I joined the WeNeedDiverseBooks team earlier this year. The organization is planning its first diversity festival in the Maryland area for summer 2016. I've been asked to develop programming for the younger attendees, children, tweens and teens. Miss Noelle will be in my thoughts as I develop those plans. With a little luck she'll be with me next year, enjoying some of the activities I've organized. That's what hope does. It lets you see the future and plan to make things better, both for yourself and for those around you. For more information on the Day Of Diversity festival, keep your eye on:

http://weneeddiversebooks.org/diversity-festival/#

like me on Facebook

follow me on twitter

In the meantime, I'm collecting diverse books for her home bookshelves. Fun stories I can read to her,  like:

  

P. S. If you have hopes you'd like to share, I'd love to hear them. People, places, things, or books. I hope everyone has a reason to hope for a brighter tomorrow.

Welcome 2015

Hi everyone! I am YA author B A Binns , writer of contemporary and realistic fiction for teens. My tagline tells you what I am about - Stories of Real Boys Growing Into Real Men - and the people who love them. 

This month we're looking at the new year.

So many things are happening in the world and my life.   I could talk about the way the Global Warming and the way the weather continues to change, only not for the better. Or about the political situation and the new Illinois Governor who apparently forgot that "raise your right hands" means the real right, not the left. I could do the state of the economy, extremist threats, any of a dozen things that are going wrong.

Instead, I'll blog about something personal.

In less than two months I will be a Grandma!! How's that for earth shattering?  The girl who never wanted to live past 50 (seriously, at 13 I made a vow to die before 50 first because old people were so decrepit and useless they probably all wished they were dead anyway. At 49 1/2 I almost went crazy from fear of a self-fulfilling prophecy) will now be a social security collecting Grandma.  Of course, my younger sister has a grandchild who just won a college scholarship, so I'm actually a little slow.

Mother & Child

We know my grandchild will be a girl. Unless she chooses to enter the world early she will be a Pisces, like me. I thought I could wait forever for this day. My daughter has some issues, and I was perfectly happy to have her delay motherhood while she struggled to mature and find herself. Now I can't wait for the kid to get old enough so I can sit her on my lap and show her the naked baby pictures I took of her mother.

This also means I have to go shopping for books. Twenty-six years ago when my daughter was born, I had a quest to make sure she had plenty of diverse books to read.  I got started early, because those books were hard to find, seldom published and marketing departments did not know what to do with them when they were published. If you wanted one it was up to you to search.  So search I did, and I amassed a collection of books with Black, Hispanic and even disabled kids (and that last was a HUGE challenge).  Those books entertained my daughter, and later my niece, the one headed for college. BTW - that one still calls me "Beloved Aunt Barbara." Not because of the books, she wasn't always happy about getting books for presents. It's because I started training her before she could talk. Her mother laughed at me but she still knows what to call me.

And now I begin the cycle again. It does feel wrong to find that, a quarter century later, finding a supply of diverse books still needs a long hard search. Big publishers still put out a paltry number, and their marketing departments still don't know how to market them. Instead they still claim "those people don't read" as their excuse for not being able to reach out to the marketplace.  As one of those people, I guarantee we, and our children, do read.  We're just not all that satisfied with what the big publishers put out.  As an adult I long ago tired of romance books where heroes extolled the virtues of women with alabaster skin. (I actually informed an editor of this once and she seemed didn't seem to understand that have only alabaster skinned heroines considered beautiful could be a problem for any reader.) I don't remember everything I thought about the book selection when I was a child, those days are lost in fuzzy pre-history, but I know I got tired of the white on the pages then too. My mission is to make sure that my grandkid never gets the feeling that books are not for her. I want her to read voraciously, no matter what big publisher marketing departments claim. I want her to see people of every race and ethnicity in her books, people with physical disabilities and from a variety of cultures. There may be a few fairies and leprechauns and aliens there too, but mostly I want her to see her world and her place in that world. So my quest for diverse kids books has already begun, even before she enters the world.

I don't have much time. By this time next year I'll have her on my lap, reading her stories. I want those stories to reflect the world she sees around her, just as I want my adult reads to reflect today's world.  I will be at both the American Library Association meeting later this month in Chicago, and as SCBWI in  February, on the lookout for diverse books and authors. I was recently thrilled to recieve and accept an invitation to join the We Need Diverse Books team at http://weneeddiversebooks.org.


CONTEST RESULTS


As part of my December post I held a contest to let a lucky reader of one of my blogs win a free spot on Adding the Spice of Diversity to Your Writing, an online writing class that begins in February. I call it adding the spice because spice doesn't change an entree, it enhances things. Diversity is a choice that allows the same plot and and adds a little something extra for readers.

The winner of the free spot was Patricia M. You can see the results here.
 Contest results

Patricia has been contacted and will be enrolled in the class for February. 

A True Life Fairy Tale Wedding

Once upon a time there was a family of working-class coal miners and builders.  The grandmother, Dorothy Goldsmith, decided it was high time the family improved their financial and social standing.

Dorothy encouraged her daughter Carole to aim high, and she did.  Carole became an airline hostess with all the prestige that went with the job.  At her job Carole met a dispatcher named Michael Middleton. They fell in love and married.

By the time their first born Kate arrived, Carole had started a mail order party goods company out of the house.  With the drive that had been instilled into her by her mother, Carole was able to make enough money to send her children to private school.

The business was very successful and the family became multi-millionaires.

Neither young Kate, nor her brother or sister wanted for anything.  She did encounter bullying at not one, but two different schools, and in spite of her treatment she got outstanding grades.

She grew up and was the first girl in her family to attend college.  Kate attended the University of St. Andrews.  There she met her Prince Charming, Prince William of Wales.

After a long courtship, a break up, and reuniting all in the course of ten years, 2001 till 2011, and they were married April 29, 2011, in a spectacular fairy tale wedding.

From meager beginnings to Catherine, Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Cambridge, the title bestowed on her by Queen Elizabeth, Kate’s grandmother-in-law, Kate emerged at the top of the social ladder.

The Middleton family has been embraced by the Queen.  She invited the Middleton's to ride with the royal family in the Diamond Jubilee Flotilla on June 3rd, 2012.

Kate has had strong women role models.  From Grandma Dorothy with her vision of a better future and social standing for her family to her new Grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, who has ruled England for 60 years and is celebrating her Diamond Jubilee this year.

Now that’s staying power!  She is still loved and respected by her subjects.

Of course, Kate’s mom, Carole, was the one who made the private schools happen.  And where would Kate be if not for her mom’s drive and determination?

Who are your role models?  Who has made a difference in your life?