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This was a large goal to tackle, but we did 12 episodes of tremendous warrior women! It’s because of people like you that listen and support women in history! We don’t know what the future holds, but want to say a huge heartfelt THANK YOU! We are filled with love and gratitude as we enter the new year!
Liberating the Queen is made with Jetpack Podcast. Full show notes and every episode at https://liberatingthequeen.com/
Edmonia Lewia Quotes:
“I was … declared to be wild — they could do nothing with me. Often they said to me, ‘Here is your book, the book of Nature; come and study it.’
“I thought I knew everything when I came to Rome, but I soon found that I had everything to learn.”
Regarding how she became an artist: “well, it was a strange selection for a poor girl to make, wasn’t it? I suppose it was in me … I became almost crazy to make something like the thing which fascinated me.”
“I was practically driven to Rome in order to obtain the opportunities for art culture, and to find a social atmosphere where I was not constantly reminded of my color. The land of liberty had not room for a colored sculptor.”
“I am going back to Italy to do something for the race – something that will excite the admiration of the other races of the earth.”
“I shall never live in America.”
“The Good Spirit always sends me friends.”
― Edmonia Lewis
References
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Liberating the Queen is made with Jetpack Podcast. Full show notes and every episode at https://liberatingthequeen.com/
Kenny was born in rural Australia to Mary and Michael Kenny in 1880. Her early education was a mix of homeschooling and structured before she broke her wrist at 17. That’s when she met her future mentor Aeneas McDonnell and discovered her love of medicine while reading through McDonnell’s books but in no way was there a direct line from this to Kenny being a master nurse.
Instead, she moved through a variety of careers from Sunday school teacher to agricultural broker, to working at a midwife’s cottage. That’s where she started to learn the nursing craft. After earning a recommendation, she moved back ‘home’ to Nobby and became a ‘Bush Nurse’.
‘Bush nursing’ was the general term given to the push by Lady Rachel Dudley in Tasmania to provide trained nursing in remote areas. 51 centers opened focused on maternal and child health, with just a tinge of ‘soft eugenics’ as was common at the time with white communities as they made the first contact with previously isolated communities.
So in 1910, Kenny had just treated her first case and had her patient recover. Her next step was to open and operate a cottage hospital for just that purpose until WW1. At that point, she sold her hospital and enlisted, traveling to England to join the Australian Army Nursing Service. Since she wasn’t a trained/certified nurse, she used a letter from her mentor McDonnell and after a month-long trial, she was accepted. She served on ships returning troops to Australia and it was there that she was promoted to ‘Sister’ a title she would use for the rest of her life. She made 16 trips back and forth between England and Australia before being honorably discharged after an illness.
In 1932, Brisbane saw a large uptick in polio cases. Kenny and friends established an ad hoc clinic behind a hotel, but after success, she moved into the hotel itself. Her first official evaluation occurred in 1934, after which she established ‘Kenny’s Clinics’ in several cities.
So its worth noting that conventional treatments at the time involved putting kids in braces and strapping them to beds/boards sometimes for months a time and then later fitted with heavy metal braces; think Forrest Gump. Kenny’s method was super duper different; she expressly didn’t believe in braces because she believed they caused ‘bad gait’ patterns.
Her clinic still exists in a way today, having united with Abbott Northwestern Hospital in 1975, renaming it Courage Kenny Rehabilitation Institute after a second merger with the Courage Institute. But her larger impact was basically the creation of the foundation of rehab, the idea that we should treat muscles not be resting/restricting them, but by applying heat/using slow/steady muscle movements/strength training etc.
Sister Kenny Quotes:
― Elizabeth Kenny
References
Sister Elizabeth Kenny Quotes
Movie: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038948/?ref_=nv_sr_1
Source
https://opedge.com/Articles/ViewArticle/2008-11_09?mf=1
http://www.polioplace.org/people/sister-elizabeth-kenny
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Elizabeth-Kenny
http://www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/B/Bush%20nursing.htm
http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/kenny-elizabeth-6934
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_poliomyelitis
http://www.mnopedia.org/thing/sister-kenny-institute
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/polio/symptoms-causes/syc-20376512
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Liberating the Queen is made with Jetpack Podcast. Full show notes and every episode at https://liberatingthequeen.com/
Sappho of Lesbos was a lyrical poet in the times of ancient Greece, and beyond. She was honored in statuary and praised by figures such as Solon and Plato. Much like the tales of Robin Hood, there are disputes on whether Sappho was a myth or an actual being. We know someone wrote poetry using this name so I will let you be the judge.
She is one of the first songwriters we know of or at least wrote songs down. She is also on the first people to refer to the moon as a sliver, we see as a collective term today.
Sappho style was melodic and sensual; she wrote songs and poems of love, lust, and yearning for more. The target of her affections was mostly female, and often girls who were selected and sent to study art with her. She has a deep connection with these women that when they left, she would often write wedding songs for them. Sappho’s poetry was applauded in her time for its homoerotic content (though scholars disparaged it later), suggesting that in ancient Greece people were open to same-sex relationships. It is speculated that in the later times her works were destroyed due to same-sex relationships being rejected by churches and dignitaries.
Sappho has remained an important cultural and literal figure; her works continue to be studied and translated. Speculation on her life remains popular in the form of fictionalized tales and ardent research. For a woman who has been dead for over two thousand years, this is quite an achievement.
Sappho Quotes:
“You may forget / but let me tell you this / someone in some future time /will think of us” ― Sappho, The Art of Loving Women
“their heart grew cold / they let their wings down”
― Sappho, If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho
“Stand and face me, my love, / and scatter the grace in your eyes.”
― Sappho, Sweetbitter Love: Poems of Sappho
“What is beautiful is good, and who is good will soon be beautiful.”
― Sappho
“What cannot be said will be wept.”
― Sappho
“The gleaming stars all about the shining moon / Hide their bright faces, when full-orbed and splendid / In the sky she floats, flooding the shadowed earth / with clear silver light.”
― Sappho
References
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Liberating the Queen is made with Jetpack Podcast. Full show notes and every episode at https://liberatingthequeen.com/
https://liberatingthequeen.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/ltq_s1_e8.mp3
Decades before Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, there was Shirley Chisholm. As the first black woman to run for president for a major political party she was years ahead of her time. So why don’t more people know about her? Shirley Chisholm made history as she announced her candidacy for the White House. Her bid for the top job was short-lived, but the symbolism is as powerful today as it was then.
Shirley Chisholm Quotes:
“If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.”
“Tremendous amounts of talent are lost to our society just because that talent wears a skirt.”
“The emotional, sexual, and psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor says, ‘It’s a girl’.”
“My God, what do we want? What does any human being want? Take away an accident of pigmentation of a thin layer of our outer skin and there is no difference between me and anyone else.”
“In the end, anti-black, anti-female, and all forms of discrimination are equivalent to the same thing – anti-humanism.”
“I have no intention of just sitting quietly and observing. I intend to speak out immediately in order to focus on the nation’s problems,” Chisholm said of her new role.
Her victory, against the backdrop of the civil rights era, was a huge milestone, but with it came challenges.
“Can you imagine being a woman, and black in congress then?” says Congresswoman Barbara Lee, who represents the 13th District of California and is one of 35 African-American women who has served in Congress to date.
The first black woman, and the second ever female on the influential rules committee in Congress, she shattered a lot of glass ceilings, says Lee.
“Some of the men in Congress did not respect her, she just stood out and they didn’t get her. But she wouldn’t back down. She didn’t go along to get along, she went to change things.”
Shirley Chisholm Campaign Button, 1972
There are of course many other salient quotes from Chisholm which delineate her positions and perspectives. Among them are:
“At present, our country needs women’s idealism and determination, perhaps more in politics than anywhere else.”
“Tremendous amounts of talent are lost to our society just because that talent wears a skirt.”
“You don’t make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas.”
“Of my two handicaps, being female put many more obstacles in my path than being black.”
The National Visionary Leadership Project has a series of oral history interviews with Ms. Chisholm in its archives, conducted by journalist Renee Poussaint.
References
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Liberating the Queen is made with Jetpack Podcast. Full show notes and every episode at https://liberatingthequeen.com/
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[Grace Hopper appears to be] ‘all Navy’, but when you reach inside, you find a ‘Pirate’ dying to be released” Jay Elliot, author
Grace Hopper Quotes:
“Humans are allergic to change. They love to say, “We’ve always done it this way.” I try to fight that. That’s why I have a clock on my wall that runs counter-clockwise””
“We’re flooding people with information. We need to feed it through a processor. A human must turn information into intelligence or knowledge. We’ve tended to forget that no computer will ever ask a new question.”
“To me programming is more than an important practical art. It is also a gigantic undertaking in the foundations of knowledge.”
“A ship in port is safe; but that is not what ships are built for. Sail out to sea and do new things.”
References
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Liberating the Queen is made with Jetpack Podcast. Full show notes and every episode at https://liberatingthequeen.com/
https://liberatingthequeen.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/ltq_s1_e6.mp3
Doctor Fe Del Mundo lead studies that evolved incubators and improved the practices in how we treat jaundice. Her whole life, spanning eight decades, was dedicated to pediatrics in the Philippines
“[Del Mundo] humorously relates that when she arrived in Boston and went to the dormitory assigned her in a letter from the director of the hospital housing, much to her surprise, she found herself in a men’s dorm. Unknowingly the Harvard officials had admitted a female to their all-male student body. But because her record was so strong, the head of the pediatrics department saw no reason not to accept her. Thus, upsetting Harvard tradition, she became the first Philippine woman and the only female at the time to be enrolled at the Harvard Medical School.”
Susan La Flesche Picotte, was born in 1865 and grew up on the Omaha Reservation. In 1884 she attended the Hampton Institute in Virginia and later earned a medical degree at the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania. She is the first Native American woman to become a doctor in the United States. After receiving her degree, Susan returned to the reservation and worked as a physician. In 1894 she began working in private practice. Susan treated everyone and was a huge advocate for better health care. Later she founded a reservation hospital, which was named in her honor. La Flesche Picotte died in 1915.
Cogan, Frances B. (1989). All-American Girl: The Ideal of Real Womanhood in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press. ISBN 082031062X.
DeJong, David (1993). Promises of the Past: A History of Indian Education in the United States. Golden, CO: North American Press. ISBN 1555919057.
Diffendal, Anne P. (January 1994). “The LaFlesche Sisters: Victorian Reformers in the Omaha Tribe”. Journal of the West. 33 (1).
En.wikipedia.org. (2018). Fe del Mundo. [online] Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fe_del_Mundo [Accessed 13 Jun. 2018].
Hoxie, Frederick (1984). A Final Promise: The Campaign to Assimilate the Indians, 1880–1920. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 0803223234.
Hms.harvard.edu. (2018). 1871-1920 | HMS. [online] Available at: http://hms.harvard.edu/departments/joint-committee-status-women/resources/interesting-reports/matriculation-women-harvard-medical-school/1871-1920 [Accessed 13 Jun. 2018].
Mathes, Valerie Sherer (1990). “Nineteenth Century Women and Reform: The Women’s National Indian Association”. American Indian Quarterly. 14 (1).
Morantz-Sanchez, Regina Markell (1985). Sympathy and Science: Women Physicians in American Medicine. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195036271.
Pcij.org. (2018). PCIJ findings: What’s flawed, fuzzy with drug war numbers? | Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism. [online] Available at: http://pcij.org/i-report/2007/fe-del-mundo.html [Accessed 13 Jun. 2018].
Rmaf.org.ph. (2018). The Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation • Honoring greatness of spirit and transformative leadership in Asia. [online] Available at: http://www.rmaf.org.ph/newrmaf/main/awardees/awardee/profile/190http://www.rmaf.org.ph/newrmaf/main/awardees/awardee/profile/190 [Accessed 13 Jun. 2018].
Speroff, Leon (2003). Carlos Montezuma, M.D. : a Yavapai American Hero : the Life and Times of an American Indian, 1866–1923. Portland, Oregon: Arnica Publishing. ISBN 0972653546.
Starita, Joe (2016). A Warrior of the People: How Susan La Flesche Overcame Racial and Gender Inequality to Become America’s First Indian Doctor. New York: St. Martin’s Press. ISBN 978-1-250-08534-4.
Swetland, Mark (August 1994). “”Make Believe White Men” and the Omaha Land Allotments of 1871–1900″. Great Plains Research. 4 (2).
Tong, Benson (1997). “Allotment, Alcohol and the Omahas”. Great Plains Quarterly. 17 (1).
Tong, Benson (1999). Susan LaFlesche Picotte, M.D.: Omaha Indian Leader and Reformer. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 0806131403.
A Doctor to Her People: Dr. Susan LA Flesche Picotte (The Great Heartlanders Series)Jul 1999
Fe Del Mundo: Filipino Doctor – ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/filipino-doctor-fe-del-mundo-1991718
Homeward the arrow’s flight: The story of Susan La Flesche, (Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte)1995
Magnificent minds. by Noyce, P. (n.d.).
Susan La Flesche Picotte, M.D.: Omaha Indian Leader and ReformerMar 2000
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Liberating the Queen is made with Jetpack Podcast. Full show notes and every episode at https://liberatingthequeen.com/
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