ABC Wednesday Archives - Page 84 of 91

H is for Her, in charge

Today is International Woman’s Day, designed 100 years ago this month as a “global day celebrating the economic, political and social achievements of women past, present and future.”

A whole JEOPARDY! category of WOMEN IN CHARGE (#6081, aired 2011-02-07)
$200: From 1966 to 1977 & from 1980 to 1984, she led the world’s largest democracy
$400: Vigdis Finnbogadottir led a theatre co. for many years before becoming this country’s president in 1980
$600: In 2010, before her term as president ended, Michelle Bachelet oversaw earthquake relief efforts in this country
$800: In 2009 Vilnius-born Dalia Grybauskaite became president of this country
$1,000 (Daily Double): President of the Philippines from 1986 to 1992, she passed away in 2009
Questions at the end of the post.

Countries that have had:
(yellow)Female heads of government
(dark orange) Female heads of state (including female representatives of heads of state (Governors-General and French Representatives of Andorra), excluding monarchs)
(light orange) Female heads of state and government (including female representatives of heads of state, excluding monarchs)

How many women are currently in the United States House of Representatives? How about the US Senate? I had to look it up. It’s 73 and 17, respectively, which puts the country 71st in terms of the number of women in national parliaments.

I’m a firm believer that progress towards equality, whether it be gender-, ethnicity-, or sexual orientation-based is not truly achieved until one can no longer keep track of the achievement.

And how many US Presidents who were female have we had? Lessee – take the square root of…oh yeah, that would be zero. Not even Petunia Pig.

This is fascinating to me because other countries have had female heads of state and/or female heads of government for decades. According to Wikipedia, the first female head of state was Khertek Anchimaa-Toka of the Tuvan People’s Republic, an independent state in Russia. The first one for a place I’ve actually HEARD of was Sükhbaataryn Yanjmaa of Mongolia, back in 1953. But the first woman who was head of government, generally a more significant role in most countries that separate the functions, was Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in 1960. The second and third are much better known: Indira Gandhi of India and Golda Meir of Israel.

Of those currently in office, the female head of government with the longest tenure is Angela Merkel of Germany (pictured above), followed closely by Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia (pictured right), who is the longest-tenured of those women serving as both heads of state and government. Cristina Fernández de Kirchner of Argentina, Laura Chinchilla of Costa Rica, and Dilma Rousseff of Brazil also currently hold both roles. Mary McAleese of Ireland and Tarja Halonen of Finland are the longest-tenured female heads of state; the latter, talk show host Conan O’Brien claims, looks like him.

Today is International Woman’s Day, designed 100 years ago this month as a “global day celebrating the economic, political and social achievements of women past, present, and future.” Here is the website, and here is a history of the event, provided by the United Nations.

From the Census: In the US, National Women’s History Month dates back to March 8, 1857, when women from New York City factories staged a protest over working conditions. But it wasn’t until 1981 that Congress established National Women’s History Week to be commemorated the second week of March. In 1987, Congress expanded the week to a month. Every year since, Congress has passed a resolution for Women’s History Month, and the President has issued a proclamation.

JEOPARDY! questions-
Who was Indira Gandhi?
What is Iceland?
What is Chile?
What is Lithuania?
Who was Corazon Aquino?

ABC Wednesday – Round 8

G is for Gertrude

Gertrude means “strong spear/spear maiden.”

My grandmother was born Gertrude Elizabeth Yates on August 10. For the longest time, we all, i.e. her daughter and her family, thought she was born in 1898, which I found easy to remember: the Spanish-American War was that year. But one day in the 1960s, she decided or was persuaded, to register to vote. And we were surprised to discover that she was in fact born in 1897. Why had she lied about this fact for so many years, we never knew.
My mother was born Gertrude Elizabeth Williams on November 17, 1927. The younger Gertrude was called Gertie by her family. Turns out, she HATED being Gertie, and, at some point before I was born, became Trudy. Only some of her cousins still referred to her as Gertie.

I’m fascinated how some names somehow get dubbed as “old-fashioned.” Gertrude is a perfectly serviceable name. In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Gertrude is Hamlet’s mother and Queen of Denmark. Yet, in the Social Security’s baby name register in the US, Gertrude was #25 in 1880 for girl names, the first year for which there was data, and stayed in the top 30 through 1912, but fell out of the top 100 in 1931, the top 200 in 1942, the top 500 in 1955, and out of the top 1000 in 1966, never to return.

It used to bother me, and I suspect it bugged my mother, that comedian Red Skelton, who had a variety show on CBS-TV for many years in the 1950s and 1960s, featured cross-eyed seagulls named Gertrude and Heathcliff in his act.

But I do find it interesting that Gertrude means strong spear/spear maiden since Roger means famous with the spear/renowned spearman.

***

The Mission Choir, the Catholic choir that my sister sang with for years and still an inactive member, requested and was granted the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass to be offered in honor of my mom. That’s pretty amazing, apparently, since they know she was not Catholic. It will be Sunday, May 1st, 2011 at noon when the choir sings: Mission Basilica San Diego de Alcala’, 10818 San Diego Mission Road, San Diego, CA 92108.

Also, a member of the Mission Choir enrolled Mom in the St. Patrick’s Mission Circle as part of the St. Patrick’s Fathers. The document says: “All members, living and deceased, are associated with the work of St. Patrick missionaries throughout the world, share in their daily Masses and prayers and in three special Masses each day as well as in sixteen Novenas of Masses each year.”

Not being Catholic, I don’t exactly know what that means, but it sounds nice.

ABC Wednesday – Round 8

F is for Firefighters

I have always lived in locations with paid firefighters. Yet, “volunteers comprise 71% of firefighters in the United States.

One of the most riveting events in my early life was the massive fire that took place at an apartment complex known as the Rogers block, four wooden structures just down the street from my grandmother’s house. While the building were a total loss, I don’t recall any casualties. Moreover, the firemen – they were all men in those days – managed to contain the fire to those buildings, not allowing it to reach the nearby homes.

So fires have long fascinated me. According to the National Fire Protection Association, the The 2009 U.S. fire loss clock
•A fire department responded to a fire every 23 seconds.
•One structure fire was reported every 66 seconds.
•One home structure fire was reported every 87 seconds
•One civilian fire injury was reported every 31 minutes.
•One civilian fire death occurred every 2 hours and 55 minutes.
•One outside fire was reported every 49 seconds.
•One vehicle fire was reported every 146 seconds.

I have always lived in locations with paid firefighters. Yet, “volunteers comprise 71% of firefighters in the United States. Of the total estimated 1,148,100 volunteer and paid firefighters across the country, 812,150 are volunteer.” Moreover, “the majority of fire departments in the United States are volunteer. Of the total 30,165 fire departments in the country, 20,857 are all volunteer; 5,099 are mostly volunteer; 1,752 are mostly career; and 2,457 are all career.”

In 2009, US firefighter fatalities included 47 volunteer firefighters, 36 career firefighters, and 7 part-time or full-time members of wildland or wildland contract fire agencies.

Is the fire protection in your locale career or voluntary firefighters?

How Do I Become A Volunteer Firefighter?

US Fire Administration

ABC Wednesday – Round 8

D is for Dylan covers

There was a quite peculiar version of Simon & Garfunkel’s The Boxer; I remain convinced to this day that was done in retaliation for a snarky S&G song.

Let’s face it: Bob Dylan didn’t/doesn’t have the prettiest voice in pop music. But his strength as a songwriter, especially early on, allowed listeners to become familiar with his songs through the performances of others.

Joan Baez, as noted previously, was an early advocate and performer of Dylan’s music, as were Peter, Paul, and Mary, who had two Top 10 songs written by Dylan way back in 1963, Blowin’ in the Wind which hit the charts in June and got to #2; and Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right, charting in September, and ending up at #9.

But it was 1965 that Dylan really broke through, both as a performer and an artist being covered. The Byrds’ Mr. Tambourine Man hit the charts in June 1965, reaching #1. Cher’s All I Really Want to Do started its climb to #15 in July, and It Ain’t Me Babe by the Turtles charted in August, eventually getting to #8. Meanwhile, Dylan had his first hit with Like a Rolling Stone, which started its ascent in July, eventually getting to #2 in September, blocked from the top of the charts by the Beatles’ Help!

Mojo magazine compiled a list of top 10 Dylan covers, while Paste magazine has listed what it considers the 50 Best Bob Dylan Covers of All Time. Meanwhile, Dylan Cover Albums.com boasts 30,000 covers. The podcast Coverville recently offered its fifth Bob Dylan Cover Story in seven years.

Of course, this cover thing can go both ways. Here’s a list of songs covered BY Bob Dylan. While quite a few were from his early career, there were also a bunch from the 1970 double album, Self Portrait. I know this very well because I bought that LP for my high school girlfriend; then we listened to it, not quite as impressed as we had hoped we might be. In particular, there was a quite peculiar version of Simon & Garfunkel’s The Boxer; I remain convinced to this day that was done in retaliation for a snarky S&G song called A Simple Desultory Philippic (Or How I Was Robert McNamara’d into Submission), in which Simon parodies Dylan; “Albert” in the song is almost certainly Dylan’s manager at the time, Albert Grossman.

Bob Dylan Covers Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” (but doesn’t almost everyone?)

ABC Wednesday – Round 8

B is for Brain Blips

On 60 Minutes, Lesley Stahl reported on a very rare ability: to remember each day of your life as if it happened yesterday. It’s called ‘superior autobiographical memory’.

A couple of months ago, I came across this interview of Barbara Strauch, author of “The Secret Life of the Grown-up Brain: The Surprising Talent of the Middle-Aged Mind.”

This paragraph jumped out at me: “Strauch notes that people in midlife start experiencing more brain blips. She opens the book in her basement, pondering what she went there for. She asks around, and finds that her middle-aged acquaintances have similar zone-outs.”

I do recognize this. Oh, and this: “Names, in particular, are easy to forget if all we’ve learned is the sound. The more context we have — the more ways something is cross-referenced in our memory banks — the better chance we have of excavating it from storage.”

When we were children, my sisters and I used to razz my grandmother for saying things like, “Oh, that’s the old [such and so] building.” It had never been called that in OUR lifetimes; why couldn’t she call it what it’s called now?

Move forward 40 years. I seriously can’t remember the name of my bank. It used to be Albany Savings Bank, then Albank, then it was purchased by Charter One, then THAT was bought up by Citizens Bank. The brain knows it’s not ASB or Albank, so it settles on Charter One, which, like Citizen’s, starts with the letter C, until I’m trying to look up my bank online.

Likewise, my power company used to be the geographically descriptive Niagara Mohawk, but is now (yawn) National Grid; it DOESN’T help that they both start with the letter N.

Sorry, grandma.

Both Demeur and Arthur have touched on this recently; the latter referred to “holiday brain”. Then there was this piece about adult ADHD, which I swear I experience periodically.

On the other hand, Newsweek magazine had a cover story called Can You Build a Better Brain? Notable is this piece: “taking up a new, cognitively demanding activity—ballroom dancing, a foreign language—is more likely to boost processing speed, strengthen synapses, and expand or create functional networks.”

I was most fascinated by a story on the TV show 60 Minutes. “Lesley Stahl reported on a very rare ability: to remember each day of your life as if it happened yesterday. It’s called ‘superior autobiographical memory’ and scientists have only identified a handful of people in the world who have it. One of them is actress Marilu Henner of ‘Taxi,’ oddly enough.”

I’m not sure I would WANT the ability to remember EVERY day; forgetting DOES have some definite benefits.
***
Roger’s brain:

Arthur may have liberal politics on the brain.
***
Oh, I need to thank Lily at Long Island Daily Photo for a $100 gift certificate!

ABC Wednesday Round 8