From the Stake to the Altar

On this day in 1431, a nineteen-year-old girl was burned alive in the old marketplace in Rouen.

She climbed the scaffold wearing an enormous cap, which said:

Heretic,

Recidivist,

Apostate,

Idolatress.

After she was burned to death, her body was thrown from a bridge into the Seine, so the waters would carry her far away.

She had been condemned by the Catholic Church and the Kingdom of France.

Her name was Joan of Arc.

Heard of her?

~Eduardo Galeano, Children of the Days

Sister Joan Chittister on "The Role of Archives in a Changing World."

"We stand deprived of twelve centuries of history that men take for granted, claim as their glory, count as their success, and consider must be our models, too.

And why? Because no one kept the archives of women–of the other half, the disdained half, the scorned and disparaged half of the human race.

Where were the archivists then who would judge such a history valuable, notable, necessary at least to the intellectual integrity of the male writing and research of the rest of the human enterprise?

To this day, as women Benedictines we know nothing of our histories, our great leaders, our dreams, our devastations, or our centuries-old learnings about what it means to be either spiritual or alive as independent spiritual women. We know only that they were there–and gone–and made invisible."- Sister Joan Chittister on "The Role of Archives in a Changing World."

Read her entire speech at PSU here.

Someone else’s debt

On this day in 1948 the state of Israel was born.

Within a few months, more than eight hundred thousand Palestinians had been deported and more than five hundred of their villages had been turned into rubble.

Those villages, where olive, fig, almond and other fruit trees grew, now lie buried under highways, shopping malls and amusement parks. They are dead and unnamed on the map rechiristened by the Government Names Committee.

Not much of Palestine is left. The two thousand years of persecution suffered by the Jewish people was invoked to justify this implacable gluttony, complete with property titles granted by the Bible.

Persecuting Jews had always been a European sport. Now the Palestinians are paying the bill.

~Eduardo Galeano, Children of the Days

Photo by Hamde Abu Rahma

We know how HIStory counts - how will HERstory count?

"History counts its skeletons in round numbers. A thousand and one remains a thousand, as though the one had never existed." —Szymborska

Memories Circles

This afternoon in 1977, fourteen mothers of disappeared children met for the first time.

From then on they searched as a group, as a group they knocked on doors that would not open. “All for all,” they said.

They said, “All for our children.”

Thousands upon thousands of children had been devoured by the Argentine military dictatorship, and more than five hundred children had been kidnapped and given to officers as war booty. The papers, radio, TV breathed not a word of it.

A few months after their first meeting, three of those mothers, Azucena Villaflor, Esther Ballestrino and Maria Euginia Ponce, also disappeared, just like their children, and like them they were tortured and murdered.

But by then the Thursday meetings were unstoppable. Their white kerchiefs moved round and round the Plaza de Mayo and around the world.

~Eduardo Galeano, Children of the Days

Where is your local Feminist Bookstore?

"Feminist Bookstore" scene from Portlandia

Portland, Oregon

In Other Words
14 NE Killingsworth Street - Portland, OR 97211

Chicago, Illinois

Women & Children First

5233 N. Clark St. - Chicago, IL 60640

Austin, Texas

BookWoman

5501 North Lamar #A-105 - Austin, TX 78751

Madison, Wisconsin

A Room of One's Own Bookstore

315 W. Gorham St., Madison, WI 53703

Tucson, Arizona
Antigone Books
411 N 4th Ave. - Tucson, AZ 85705

Gainesville, Florida
Wild Iris Books
22 SE 5th Ave., Suite D - Gainesville, FL 32601

Atlanta, Georgia

Charis Books and More

1189 Euclid Ave NE - Atlanta, GA 30307

Amherst, Massachusetts
Food For Thought Books
108 N. Pleasant St. - Amherst, MA 01002

New York, New York

Bluestockings

172 Allen Street, New York, NY 10002

Philadelphia, PA
Big Blue Marble Books
551 Carpenter Lane - Philadelphia, PA 19119

St. Louis, MO
Left Bank Books
321 N. 10th - St Louis, MO 63101

Feminist Majority Foundation has a list of bookstores by region.  I am working through to make sure each is still open. One source I found said there are actually only 9 feminist bookstores still open in the US.

Please comment below to add more Feminist Bookstores from around the world!

8-year-old girl takes on S.C. lawmakers in fossil fight

Eight-year-old Olivia McConnell, from New Zion, S.C., is so passionate about science, she can be found searching for -- and finding -- shark's teeth in the playground sand during recess.

Asked why she spends her recess looking for shark's teeth, Olivia replies, "Well, I like fossils."

Her love of fossils led her to discover that South Carolina has no official state fossil. She knew one of the first fossils found in North America, from an ancient kind of woolly mammoth, was dug up in South Carolina, so she wrote to Gov. Nikki Haley and other state lawmakers to lay out the case.

"I wanted it to be the state fossil because I didn't want that history to be lost, and our state to not get credit for it," Olivia says. "If something's wrong I've got to help out. It's just the right thing to do. That's what I'm all about."

At the state Capitol, Olivia's letter went to her senator, Kevin Johnson, who thought a state fossil was a great idea.

"I thought it would just fly through the House and through the Senate, and we'd have the governor pass it with no problem," Johnson says.

But then, big problem: Several highly religious senators stalled the bill by attaching whole passages from the Bible's Book of Genesis. The senators, including Mike Fair, said the Creator of the mammoth should be recognized, as well.

"There had to be a cause to the beginning," Fair says. "It didn't happen accidentally."

But now, Fair admits he did not understand who he was dealing with. Olivia and her family pushed back hard. They also believe in the Bible, but they don't want religion attached to a fossil law. Fair and the others were motivated to compromise.

"The fact that an 8-year-old was doing this was remarkable and something we should celebrate," Fair says.

Right now, the bill remains stalled in committee, but Olivia will not budge -- ever. She says she'll "keep going until they pass the bill."

"Maybe it might not be until I'm 23 or 40," Olivia says. "If it doesn't pass this year, I'm going to be back next year."

In the meantime, they can find Olivia on the playground, digging up history -- not yet realizing how a third-grade girl facing down the state Senate might have made some HERtory of her own.

Source: cbsnews.com