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Newsletter Five; December 27, 2021

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  This month’s newsletter, after a long hiatus, focuses on essays by Kathleen Meadows, “Pictures in the Sky,” and “Summer of 1972,” by Susan Light.   Kathleen brings us to the three-acre farm in the lower San Joaquin Valley in California to the alfalfa fields and its pungent aroma and the changing colors of the sky. We see her move from those fields to the suburbs to UC Berkeley and to a life of teaching and motherhood.  Throughout her childhood, her teen years, and her years as a mother, a single mother, and a teacher, the writing spirit and as she describes, “the raw poetry of sight and sound, the music of words, that wouldn’t let go.” She returns to those words and to those visions over and over again. Susan Light, in her essay, “Summer of 1972”, describes the hurdles and challenges she faced when hoping to pursue her interest in science and medicine.  A summer program in Conn. becomes her way out of a narrow environment to one that will show her “It is OK to be a girl and like scie
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Pictures in the Sky By Kathleen Meadows

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   As a young child living on a  3 -acre  farm  in the lower San Joaquin Valley,  I would spend  long  days lying in  alfalfa fields , the pungent aroma filling  my senses as I gazed  up  at the sky. At daw n it would be pin k and gold, sometimes cyan-blue   at midday, deepen ing  to  vi olet  at nightfall.  I would pretend I was an  astronomer  studying the skies, try  t o imagine stories as I scanned   my celestial  hideaway .  I remember wanting to  describe my feelings   so everyone  would kno w what  it was  like to wa tch stars move, or  clouds  morph  into   unsheared   sheep,   or even  the sensation  of mud squishing between my  toes as I hopped back to our smal l clapboard house with the wrap- around porch.   My  imagination  only became more intense  as I grew older. I could scarcely wait for the  dented  yellow school bus to drop me off so I could r ace home to make a secret fort  out of eucalyp tus branches, or watch the  Angus  bull  mating  one of  our favorite  Guernsey
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Summer of 1972 By Susan Light

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      Growing up in a middle-class Jewish family in Pittsburgh in the 1960’s doesn’t set a girl up for a scientific career. The family tree was laden with immigrant businessmen and housewives. The only woman physician I had ever met was a radiologist at the Children’s Hospital when I had whacked my foot against the bathtub in our narrow bathroom in a futile attempt to exercise. Devoted to watching “Dr. Kildare” and “Ben Casey”(adoring the former and just tolerating the latter), I don’t recall any women in medicine who weren’t nurses.   The science classrooms at my high school were double the size of the regular classrooms to accommodate the labs. There were doors at both sides of the podium where Mr. Herman, the freshman biology teacher, stood passing out completed test papers as we shuffled out of the door of the first floor classroom closest to the main entrance. As one of the younger teachers with a lawn mower haircut and a wide gap between his two front teeth, he had won the affect
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Newsletter Four; May 31, 2021

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  Welcome to our fourth “Women’s Work” newsletter. How encouraging to publish this one in a new post Covid era when many of us can return to some of the lives we lived pre pandemic. I hope this finds you and your loved ones safe and well. This newsletter features the writer, Cynthia Chin-Lee, and the artist, film maker, photographer, Catherine Herrera.  Each traces their roots to their ancestors and to their origins of what led them to become the creative artists and writers. Cynthia begins her essay with her mother, Nancy. Nancy, while a talented visual artist and a story teller, was not allowed the freedom of her daughter. Despite winning prizes for her art and a scholarship to art school, she was asked to turn it down and support her brother’s ambition to attend college. Cynthia acknowledges her easier path to becoming a writer and growing up in her Chevy Chase area outside of Washington D.C.   She describes the discrimination her family faced in buying a home, or fire being set to
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Thoughts on being an Asian American woman writer… By Cynthia Chin-Lee

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  1934, Baltimore, MD.   Someone was knocking on the door.    Then seven years old, Nancy was folding clean diapers for her mother, but her father grabbed her arm and shoved her into the closet. Her father  warned,“ Get  in there and be quiet!”    He then calmly proceeded to open the front door and chat with the local truant officer. The officer’s eyes narrowed as he said, “We heard you have a school-age child? She should be attending school. That’s the law.” Nancy’s father invited the officer to look around the house. Only small children were playing in the backyard, all too young to go to school.   While Nancy should have been going to school, she was held back so she could help take care of her younger siblings. She was not allowed to attend school until her brother, a year and a half younger, was old enough to go to school. By that time, it would be useful to have her walk with him as her parents cared about educating him, but not her.   Nancy was my mother, a talented visual artis
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How the Spirit of Creativity Moves Me By Catherine Herrera

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  When I was a young artist, still unfamiliar with this energy called Creativity, after each new creation, I wondered, will Creativity show up again?  Is it something I can will up on my own? What brings it forth, what pushes it away? Dipping into the obscurity of the darkroom as a sweat lodge, where I communicated with Creativity, offering my dedication to perfect tone and the full Ansel Adams Zone.     Photography was the first of those images pinned to the cork board in my grandparents kitchen, stories of loved ones and where they were now. My Grandpa's travel photos and my Dad's first published photos were the first breadcrumbs on my path. Before there was a camera, I used my fingers to frame those images I would have taken.    Creativity returned. Again. And, again. I learned to collaborate with the energy, to offer proper deference and respect. I was no idiot. I knew I had no control over Creativity. Patiently, Creativity showed me how we could work together to create mag
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