Sharing a New Zealand Adventure

From ViVi Hlavsa:
For most of February, I was in New Zealand and Australia with Elderhostel. As usual, they had fine resource people who led us into the mysteries of the geology of the area, the Maori culture, the Aborigines, and the founding of the two countries.

They're very different:
New Zealand is not only divided north and south into two islands, it's also divided east and west, resting on two tectonic plates, with the Pacific Plate jamming into the Australian and moving laterally as well. That's why the country is one of the most volcanic areas in the world. The first picture is of some beautiful hot springs.

The Australian continent, on the other hand, is quite stable. The oldest land-mass in the world, it once belonging to the collection of continents called Gondwanaland, which included the Antarctic, Africa, South America and India (before it went racing north and created the Himalayas).

Maoris are also quite different from Aborigines.
They emigrated originally from Taiwan and, since the New Zealand "bush" is virtually impenetrable, they would burn out coastal settlements, keeping their territories by war (image 2, a Maori "greeting"), so when the Europeans arrived in the early 1800's, they were not easily conquered.

The Aborigines were a nomadic people. When the Europeans arrived there in the late 1700's, they did not feel the need to defend their territories. Moreover, the New Zealanders love to note that they were not settled by convicts! Today, New Zealand is a bi-cultural country--two official languages.

In Australia, the struggle to integrate the two cultures has been more painful. I happened to be in Melbourne when they had their "Sorry Day," apologizing for tearing mixed breed children from their parents to "save" them with Western-style education. It was very moving.

All-in-all, it was a great trip, highly recommended. I especially enjoyed my 14 days on the sea,entering the coastal cities. I've included a picture from New Zealand's Napier--a town destroyed by earthquake in the early 30's, rebuilt in the style of the day--Art Deco (image 3), and a picture of one of the fjords we entered on New Zealand's South Island (image 4). The famous Sydney Opera House, where I heard a splendid La Boheme! (image 5). Finally, here's a picture of me wearing a boa (image 6) -- ViVi

We invite branch members to share the highlights of their trips with the rest of us. Then we'll know who to call when we want recommendations on what to see and do!

Introducing Girls to Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math

Tracy Sherman, AAUW Dialog, posted about her visit to AAUW Buffalo's Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) day for 6th to 9th grade girls and their parents. What a great event! Perhaps we should plan something similar here.

Girls and STEM Education «

Throughout the day, more than 350 girls at Tech Savvy attended workshops where they learned about careers in dentistry, veterinary medicine, and nursing, as well as those with the FBI and NASA. While the girls were at these sessions, more than 200 parents learned about barriers girls face in these fields, how to encourage their daughters to enter these fields, legislation to diversify STEM fields, and how to prepare for college. The day closed with a keynote address by Camille Alleyne, an aerospace engineer at NASA and the founder and president of the Brightest Stars Foundation, an organization whose mission is to educate and empower young women to be future leaders in STEM. Hearing Camille’s life story of dreaming big and believing in herself inspired these girls to believe that they can — and will — be the next generation of scientists, engineers, computer scientists, and mathematicians.

Photo of Jerrie Cobb next to a Mercury spaceship capsule from NASA public domain photos.

Since this is Women in History month, some history is in order:

Jerrie Cobb, already an accomplished pilot and on her way to being one of the world's best, became the first American woman to pass all three phases of NASA testing. Dr. Randy Lovelace, a NASA scientist who had conducted the official Mercury program physicals, administered the tests at his private clinic without official NASA sanction.

Cobb passed all the training exercises, ranking in the top 2 percent of all astronaut candidates. The results were announced in 1960 at a conference in Stockholm, Sweden. Lovelace and Cobb, financed by the world-renowned aviatrix Jacqueline Cochran, recruited more women to take the tests.

All the women who participated in the program, known as First Lady Astronaut Trainees (FLAT), were skilled pilots.

Cobb was sworn in as a consultant to NASA Administrator James Webb on the issue of women in space, but mounting political pressure and internal opposition lead the agency to restrict its official astronaut training program to men. After three years, Cobb left NASA for the jungles of the Amazon, where she has spent four decades as a solo pilot delivering food, medicine, and other aid to the indigenous people.

Cobb has received the Amelia Earhart Medal, the Harmon Trophy, the Pioneer Woman Award, the Bishop Wright Air Industry Award, and many other decorations for her tireless years of humanitarian service.

Although these FLAT women never flew in space, they paved the way for female astronauts like Sally Ride, Eileen Collins and many others that now support the U.S. Space Program.

Update 3/24/08 - I received this comment this morning:

This is a wonderful story you posted about Jerrie Cobb and the American Association of University Women.

Please see Jerrie's biography on our web site. She is still flying and doing marvelous things.

Check the web site: http://www.womeninaviation.com and check the 1999 calendar where her story is posted.

Happy Easter

Carol
Carol L. Osborne, Aviation Historian

Support the Prevention First Act

Last Tuesday, the CDC released new data estimating that one in four young women between the ages of 14 and 19 in the United States-over 3 million girls-is infected with at least one of the four most common sexually transmitted diseases.

Currently, there are three separate federal programs that fund abstinence-only-until-marriage programs, but no federal funding exists specifically for comprehensive sex education. States can only receive funding if they agree to teach abstinence-only-until-marriage while excluding information about the health benefits of contraception to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.

The Prevention First Act includes a comprehensive approach to sex education - age appropriate education that promotes abstinence but includes information about contraception.

Take Action!

To read more about this issue and thank Senators Schumer and Clinton for cosponsoring and supporting the Prevention First Act, just click on this "Take Action" link. (If you live outside NY, enter your zip code and the message can be tailored for your senators.)

Problem with the link? You can copy and paste the following URL into your Internet browser:
http://capwiz.com/aauw/issues/alert/?alertid=11166706&PROCESS=Take+Action.

Reaching Out to College Students

The Riverside California Branch has a new blog. Yesterday they posted about their new partnership with a local college organization. That seems like a great approach for introducing young people to AAUW. Maybe it's one we can use here.

Riverside Branch: Partnership with La Sierra University

Partnership with La Sierra University

We WILL be partnering with La Sierra University. To start with, we will partner with the La Sierra program, Students In Free Enterprise (SIFE). Those who attended the January Branch meeting will remember how dynamic the SIFE program was. [Read More]

Miss Pettigrew and Pay Equity

Do you read Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster especially Howard’s End, Jane Austen and enjoy the film Cold Comfort Farm?

If your response to the above list is positive, read on. And go see Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, now playing in Woodstock. The main character reminds me of the AAUW mission, spirit and spunk. The underlying theme relates to our recent telephone conference call on Pay Equity – something only distantly addressed in the ‘merry romp’ as the Washington Post critic called it. Neither of the women character’s have economic safety nets, hence their desperation as well as their wiles.

Click here for a cheeky review anti-ageist although it means to be cute. Read it, if I haven’t convinced you that you might enjoy this bittersweet comedy on the last few moments before Hitler’s Blitz. Somehow we leave the cinema knowing Miss Pettigrew and her ilk will triumph over inequities, as we will in this epoch as well.

March Book Club Selection: Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

This Book Club in a Bag novel by Lisa See is set in 19th century China and tells of the friendship of two school girls.

Reading Group Guides says:

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is a brilliantly realistic journey back to an era of Chinese history that is as deeply moving as it is sorrowful. With the period detail and deep resonance of Memoirs of a Geisha, this lyrical and emotionally charged novel delves into one of the most mysterious of human relationships: female friendship.

We hope you'll join us.

When: Tuesday, March 18th, 1pm

Where: Kingston Area Library

Feb. Branch meeting on pay equity - as scheduled!

On Tuesday, Feb. 26th, a handful of intrepid AAUW members defeated yet another blizzard to participate in our first branch meeting by conference call.

Our February program, Pay Equity Status Report, a presentation by Lois Haignere, Ph.D., had already been rescheduled once due to snow. Determination can make many things happen. We met despite the snow via conference call.

Lois is a respected researcher in pay equity issues. Some of the points she made:

• There's a significant difference between equal pay and comparable pay.
• In the private sector you can be fired for disclosing your pay to others, so there's often no way to know whether you are paid unequally; the 2007 Supreme Court decision made it virtually impossible to bring a successful private sector suit.
  
• In NYS, the existing law covers only equal pay.
• To correct this, in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2007, the NYS Assembly has passed the NYS Fair Pay Bill with bi-partisan support and great fanfare
• Every year the NYS Senate kills the NYS Fair Pay Bill in committee.

This year a broad based coalition of women's groups, including AAUW, are committed to getting the bill out of committee. This call/branch meeting was a prelude to Pay Equity Day in Albany on April 2, featuring Gloria Steinem and others who will join with us to lobby the State Legislature on the upcoming vote for pay equity.

You can download a pdf of Lois' slides here.

Women and minorities have long received lower pay than their counterpart males. According to recent research by national AAUW, women now earn 77 cents to every one dollar men earn, yet do not pay correspondingly less at the cash registers. This year, the focus for Pay Equity Day in Albany will be on improving the lot of librarians and library aides, teachers' aides, nursing aides and food service workers -- often women, often supporting families and children.

This free program is open to the public. Donations will be accepted to provide scholarships for those wishing to join the lobbying in Albany on Wed., April 2. For more information, contact AAUW Kingston Branch President Garnette Arledge (845-702-2120, kaauw12401@gmail.com).

New MOMA show in time for AAUW March 8 trip

New Color Show at MOMA
From The New Yorker, February 25, 2008
MOMA's upcoming show "Color Chart: Reinventing Color, 1950 to Today" identifies a broad shift in artists' approaches to their palettes, away from the spiritual (a la Kandinsky) and theoretical (a la Josef Albers), and toward ready-made sources and random systems. On view will be nearly a hundred works by dozens of artists, including Bas Jan Ader, Daniel Buren, Damien Hirst, Yves Klein, Sherrie Levine, Gerhard Richter, Frank Stella, and Andy Warhol.

Seats still available for March 8 trip. Member discount available. Email kaauw12401@gmail.com to reserve with Garnette

Reflecting on Rabbi Heschel's Question

Contributed by Victoria Reiss

Every morning when The New York Times arrives my habit is to peruse the front page and op-eds, then turn to the obituaries. I realize that sounds like a gloomy way to start the day but obituaries tell me more about our famous contemporaries than I knew, and I'm always curious about the paths that led to their success.

Recently it was a "Connections" biographical article about Rabbi Abraham Heschel, not an obituary (he died in 1972) that caught my eye because I had been on one of the anti-war marches he led. It was 1967-68, a march from Central Park to the United Nations that he led along with Martin Luther King,Jr., Dr. Benjamin Spock, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Paul Moore of St. John the Divine, and William Sloane Coffin among others.

My ten-year-old son Tom was with me and when he got bored with the slow pace, I suggested that if we walked faster we could be right behind Dr. Spock, and that's how, in one slice of archival footage that is shown on TV occasionally, there is Tom's face in the first row behind the leaders.

Heschel was an important ecumenical leader who asked "What way of living is compatible with the grandeur and mystery of life?" To me, one perfect question.

I thought of the mysterious chemistry of our bodies. This week a report was announced that may finally explain muscle fatigue; that it is caused by stored calcium leaking into muscle cells. Scientists live constantly with "the grandeur and mystery of life" and hopefully the rest of us share in the wonder.

But now I find myself reflecting every day on Heschel's speculation on how we should live to be "compatible with the grandeur and mystery of life."

Photograph by Benedict Fernandez. Published in: Kasher, Steven. The Civil Rights Movement: A Photographic History, 1954-68. New York: Abbeville Press, 1996. Found on the Stanford University Lesson Plan: Martin Luther King, Jr's "Beyond Vietnam."

Note: we thought the 3rd man in this photo with Dr. Spock and Dr. King was Rabbi Heschel, but another off-line photo identifies Rabbi Heschel, with beard and beret, between Dr. King and this unidentified fellow.

Branch Historian Interviews Mary Gelhaus

This month Bernie Carpino interviewed Mary Gelhaus. Mary has been a member since 1963 and has served in a variety of capacities including branch president from 1989 to 1992.

Mary Gelhaus is a wonderful source of AAUW information. Mary’s mother had been an AAUW member so Mary was quick to join the Kingston Branch when she moved here. She has been a member of our branch since July, 1963.

Adelaide Van Wagenen gave her rides to meetings which were then held at the YWCA.

In her second year of membership, Mary was asked to be Treasurer. She remembered that National began using spreadsheets to track membership dues during that time.

Communication also underwent changes. The newsletter was originally churned out on a mimeograph machine. In the 80’s it was done by a non-member for a nominal fee until Mary began doing it on the computer. Due to postage costs, it was decided to print bi-monthly rather than monthly. Among other contributions, Mary did the Directory for three years, finding it often difficult to get all the necessary information.

In the late 80’s leadership became a problem – younger women were not joining and some members had dropped out because of National’s very aggressive pro-abortion ads.

Jean Guzewich agreed to be president to keep the organization alive. (1987-89) Next Mary took over the position (1989-92) with Veronica Rafferty helping with programming. Mary instituted Saturday morning membership coffees; membership gradually increased and new leaders emerged.

Mary recalls AAUW’s involvement in community affairs.

• As an advocate for the Library, a film was made to be shown to community groups at the time the library was moving to its present location.
• Members assisted Ulster Literacy with a project in which members would rewrite a news story so it could be used as a teaching aid.
• A panel and study on child abuse chaired by Edna Vickers was a catalyst for awareness and change.
• Members visited the homeless shelter and prepared and served a meal to the residents.

Social connections are important to AAUW members and Mary is no exception. She speaks fondly of June picnics, the Christmas potluck dinners with spouses attending and doing the clean-up. Fellowship was generated in attending performances at UPAC and other venues.

Mary feels AAUW is doing well locally. Nationally membership has dropped and Mary thinks there is too much emphasis on a mission-based approach.

What do you think?