Monday, July 4, 2005

Women of the 4th!



On today's patriotic day, I offer a reminder that we also honor the women of our past who have shaped our country to what it is today! Perhaps you can add in the comments section, those women you feel should be honored! Should be an interesting list.

I offer the following interview by Paul O'Donnell with Cokie Roberts. Mr. O'Donnell says Ms. Roberts wrote a book called "Founding Women and recovering the opinions of the women of the American Revolution" though I found it on the internet as "Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation", but heck when do reporters ever get facts wrong! Ha! I think I'll put it on my reading list! I heard Cokie talk about this book on C-SPAN a while ago when they had a bunch of speakers all day & she was hysterical!

You can listen to her talk on NPR, about 7 min. She talks about 1 women who actually signed the Declaration of Independence...I don't remember hearing about this in school! Ha!

If you go to MPR & scroll down to Feb24th there is a 54 min interview. It is a foundraising hour for MPR, so you hear the typical money requests, but I think the interview is worth it. They do mention the History Channel's special on her book.

Another place you can hear an hour conversation with her is the National Constitution Center.

I love this quote from Paul O'Donnell's interview:


Paul: "There's a great scene described by Esther Edwards Burr, the daughter of Jonathan Edwards and mother of Aaron Burr, when she lowers the boom on a male chauvinist."

Cokie: "Right, she was in an argument with a gentlemen in Princeton over the Stockton family. She wrote in her letters, "I've had a smart combat with Mr. Ewing about our sex. He is a man of good parts and learning but has mean thoughts of women." She says, "Mr. Ewing says, 'She and the Stocktons are full of talk about friendship and society … I ask what he would have them talk about, whether he choose they should talk about fashions and dress? He said, things that they understood. He did not think women knew what friendship was. They were hardly capable of anything so cool and rational as friendship. My tongue you know hangs pretty loose. … You may guess what a large field this speech opened for me. I retorted several severe things about him before he had time to speak again. He blushed and seemed confused. We carried on the dispute for an hour. I talked him quite silent." Now that’s pretty fabulous."

Enjoy! 

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