Author Topic: Strong, gorgeous women!  (Read 546732 times)

Offline Meryl

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Re: Strong, gorgeous women!
« Reply #150 on: May 10, 2007, 12:09:28 am »


Judy Collins (born May 1, 1939 in Seattle, Washington), American folk and standards singer and songwriter, known for the stunning purity of her soprano; for her eclectic tastes in the material she records (which has included folk, showtunes, pop, and rock and roll); and for her social activism.




Joan Baez (born January 9, 1941), American folk singer and songwriter known for her highly individual vocal style.

She is best known for her 1970s hits "Diamonds & Rust" and "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" -- and to a lesser extent,"We Shall Overcome" "Sweet Sir Galahad" and "Joe Hill" (songs she performed at the 1969 Woodstock festival). She is also well known due to her early and long-lasting relationship with Bob Dylan and her even longer-lasting passion for activism, notably in the areas of nonviolence, civil and human rights and, in more recent years, the environment.


Del, thanks for posting George Sand.  She's a favorite of mine.  :)
« Last Edit: May 10, 2007, 01:31:35 am by Meryl »
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Offline David In Indy

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Re: Strong, gorgeous women!
« Reply #151 on: May 10, 2007, 12:22:25 am »
Has anyone mentioned...

Katharine Hepburn                     

One of the most beautiful and talented women ever to grace Hollywood.











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Offline dot-matrix

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Re: Strong, gorgeous women!
« Reply #152 on: May 10, 2007, 02:01:54 am »
Elizabeth Hanford "Liddy" Dole (born July 29, 1936) is an American politician who served in both the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush presidential administrations, and currently serves as a United States senator representing the state of North Carolina. The first woman to represent North Carolina in the Senate, she was elected to the Senate in 2002 for a term ending in 2009. She is a Republican and is also the former chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Her husband is former U.S. Senator and presidential nominee Bob Dole.

During her tenure with the Department of Transportation she is responsible for the implementation of the "third eye" brake light on passenger cars being made mandatory. She worked with MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) to pass laws withholding federal highway funding from any state that had a drinking age below twenty-one. The state government of South Dakota opposed the drinking age law and sued Dole in the case South Dakota v. Dole, but the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Dole. She oversaw the privatization of the national freight railroad, CONRAIL. She initiated random drug testing within the Department of Transportation.

Dole served as United States Secretary of Labor from 1989 to 1990 under George H. W. Bush; she is the first woman to serve in two different Cabinet positions in the administrations of two Presidents.

From 1991 to 1999 she was president of the American Red Cross.



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Offline dot-matrix

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Re: Strong, gorgeous women!
« Reply #153 on: May 10, 2007, 02:05:24 am »
Pearl Sydenstricker Buck, most familiarly known as Pearl S. Buck (birth name Pearl Comfort Sydenstricker; Chinese: pinyin: Sài Zhēnzhū) (June 26, 1892 – March 6, 1973), was a prolific American writer and Nobel Prize winner.

Pearl Comfort Sydenstricker Buck was born in Hillsboro, West Virginia to Caroline (Stulting; 1857-1921) and Absalom Sydenstricker (1852-1931), a Southern Presbyterian missionary. The family was sent to Zhenjiang, China in 1892 when Pearl was 3 months old. She was raised in China and learned the Chinese language and customs from a teacher named Mr. Kung. She was taught English as a second language by her mother and tutor. She was encouraged to write things at an early age.

The Boxer Uprising greatly affected Pearl Buck and her family. Pearl Buck wrote that during this time, “…her eight-year-old childhood … split apart.” Her Chinese friends deserted her and her family and there were not as many Western visitors as there once were. “The streets [of China] were alive with rumors- many … based on fact- of brutality to missionaries …” Pearl Buck’s father was a missionary so Pearl Buck’s mother, her little sister, and herself were “…evacuated to the relative safety of Shanghai, where they spent nearly a year as refugees…” (The Good Earth, Introduction) Her childhood life was greatly interrupted. In July 1901, Pearl Buck and her family sailed to San Francisco. Not until the following year did the Sydenstrickers return back to China.



Buck began her writing career in 1930 with her first publication of East Wind: West Wind. In 1931, she wrote her most famous novel, The Good Earth (considered to be one of the best of her many works). The story of the farmer Wang Lung's life won her the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1932. Her career continued to flourish; she won the William Dean Howells Medal in 1935.



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Offline dot-matrix

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Re: Strong, gorgeous women!
« Reply #154 on: May 10, 2007, 02:11:14 am »
Jane Austen (16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was an English novelist whose works include Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion, Emma, Mansfield Park, and Northanger Abbey. Her biting social commentary and masterful use of both free indirect discourse and irony eventually made Austen one of the most influential and honored novelists in English Literature.

Austen's best-known work is Pride and Prejudice, which is viewed as an exemplar of her socially astute comedies of manners. Austen also wrote a satire of the popular Gothic novels of Ann Radcliffe, Northanger Abbey, which was published posthumously in 1818. Adhering to a common contemporary practice for female authors, Austen published her novels anonymously; her anonymity kept her out of leading literary circles.

Austen's comedies of manners, especially Emma, are often cited for their perfection of form. Modern critics continue to unearth new perspectives on Austen's keen commentary regarding the predicament of unmarried genteel English women in the late 1790s and early 1800s, a consequence of inheritance law and custom, which usually directed the bulk of a family's fortune to eldest male heirs.

Although Austen's career coincided with the Romantic movement in literature, she was not an intensely passionate Romantic. She was more neo-classical. Passionate emotion usually carries danger in an Austen novel: the young woman who exercises twice a day is more likely to find real happiness than one who irrationally elopes with a capricious lover. Austen's artistic values had more in common with David Hume and John Locke than with her contemporaries William Wordsworth and Lord Byron. Among Austen's influences were Samuel Johnson, William Cowper, Samuel Richardson, Walter Scott, George Crabbe and Fanny Burney.

Although Austen did not promote passionate emotion as did other Romantic movement writers, she was also sceptical of its opposite -- excessive calculation and practicality often leads to disaster in Austen novels. Jane loved to write her novels in peace and she only shared them with her family when they were performing plays.
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Offline dot-matrix

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Re: Strong, gorgeous women!
« Reply #155 on: May 10, 2007, 02:12:59 am »
Emily Dickinson (December 10, 1830(1830-12-10) – May 15, 1886 (aged 55)) was an American poet. Though virtually unknown in her lifetime, Dickinson has come to be regarded, along with Walt Whitman, as one of the two quintessential American poets of the 19th century.

Dickinson lived an introverted and hermetic life. Although she wrote, at the last count, 1,789 poems, only a handful of them were published during her lifetime. All of these were published anonymously and some may have been published without her knowledge.

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Offline Lumière

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Re: Strong, gorgeous women!
« Reply #156 on: May 10, 2007, 02:16:32 am »

Kathryn Dawn Lang
Singer, songwriter, activist..




Offline dot-matrix

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Re: Strong, gorgeous women!
« Reply #157 on: May 10, 2007, 02:20:25 am »
Maria Isabella Boyd (May 4, 1844 – June 11, 1900), best known as Belle Boyd, was a Confederate spy in the American Civil War. She operated from her father's hotel in Front Royal, Virginia, and provided valuable information to Confederate generals Turner Ashby and Stonewall Jackson during the 1862 Valley Campaign.Belle Boyd's espionage career began by chance. On July 4, 1861, a band of drunken Union soldiers broke into her home in Martinsburg, intent on raising the U. S. flag over the house. When one of them insulted her mother, Belle drew a pistol and killed him. She was 17 years old. A board of inquiry exonerated her, but sentries were posted around the house and officers kept close track of her activities. She profited from this enforced familiarity, charming at least one of the officers, Capt. Daniel Keily, into revealing military secrets. "To him," she wrote later, "I am indebted for some very remarkable effusions, some withered flowers, and a great deal of important information." Belle conveyed those secrets to Confederate officers via her slave, Eliza Hopewell, who carried the messages in a hollowed-out watch case.For her contributions, she was awarded the Southern Cross of Honor. Confederate President Andrew Jackson also gave her captain and honorary aide-de-camp positions.

When her lover gave her up, Belle was arrested. Boyd was arrested on July 29, 1862, and held for a month in the Old Capitol Prison in Washington before being released. She was later arrested and imprisoned a second time, but again was set free.



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Re: Strong, gorgeous women!
« Reply #158 on: May 10, 2007, 02:24:17 am »
Eleanor Rosalynn Smith Carter,(August 18, 1927-) First Lady of the United States from 1976-1980, significantly raised public awareness of mental health issues by serving as honorary chair of the Presidential Commission on Mental Health. The work of the Commission led to the passage of the Mental Health System Act of 1980.

Her founding and continued work on the “Every Child by Two” initiative has saved thousands of children’s lives through immunization and spearheaded further public health immunization initiatives worldwide.

Mrs. Carter has demonstrated a life-long dedication to the concerns of women and children, the poor and the mentally ill: contributing her active presence
and policy expertise to the Policy Advisory Board of the Atlanta Project, the Last Acts coalition to improve end-of-life care, Habitat for Humanity, Project Interconnections that
provides housing for the homeless and mentally ill, and the Friendship Force.

Her books have aided thousands of people seeking assistance and guidance regarding mental health issues, care-giving and creating new paths in life. She is the recipient of numerous honors including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.

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Re: Strong, gorgeous women!
« Reply #159 on: May 10, 2007, 02:27:03 am »
Bessie  Coleman
(1892 - 1926)



 
   
The world’s first African American woman aviator, Bessie Coleman, earned her pilot’s license in 1921 in France, two years before her more famous contemporary, Amelia Earhart.

Bessie Coleman, the tenth child in a family of thirteen, grew up in a large, single-parent family in rural Texas. She learned about aviation through childhood reading, finished high school and some teacher’s college training, and moved to Chicago. There, she was mentored by two African-American philanthropists, Robert Abbott and Jesse Binga. Denied admission to American aviation schools because of her race and gender, she learned French and went to France. In 1921 she earned an international pilot’s license from the highly respected Federation Aeronautique International.

She returned to the United States and spent the next five years touring the country, giving exhibition flights, barnstorming and parachuting at airports. Earning the nickname Queen Bess, she challenged the barriers of racial discrimination and refused to participate in segregated events. She planned to open an aviation school to teach other African Americans to fly and become an active part of the growing aviation industry.

Tragically, her life and dream ended in her untimely death on April 30, 1926 during an exhibition accident when she fell from the plane and died instantly. She left a substantial legacy because of her modeling a pathway for women and people of color in aviation, and her challenges to Jim Crow practices. Bessie Coleman is honored every year by African American pilots dropping a wreath from the air over her gravesite.
 
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