100 Things I Want to Tell My Children and Grandchildren: #10

In 1987 I instigated the research and writing of the history of Austin women. On January 15, 2015, I will lead a committee of women leaders to begin work to revive and update that history.

Twenty-seven years ago, as a member of the Austin Commission for Women, I instigated and chaired a project to research the history of Austin women on the occasion of the 150th birthday of Austin. That history, written by well-known historians Ruthe Winegarten and Janet Humphrey, and funded by a variety of Austin businesses, included an extensive and beautiful display featuring approximately 100 women who built Austin, along with brief captions explaining their involvement and contributions. This history was officially presented at a ceremony in the Texas Capitol rotunda. Shannon Sedwick of Esther’s Follies, and a group of other Austin actors dressed in period costume, presented live vignettes of the women featured in the history exhibit. Mayor Lee Cooke accepted the history on behalf of Austin citizens. The ceremony was well attended with standing room only.

Following the presentation, the history exhibit made the rounds at a number of events and at several schools during Women’s History Month (March) and was eventually housed at the Austin History Center where it is currently stored.  

On January 15 the Austin History Center Staff, a group of interested Austin women, and myself will meet to unearth that long-ago researched history, to bring those women back to life, and to document the additional women who have continued to help make Austin a unique and vital community.  We will also be working to identify the best format for presenting this old and new information, such as a website and/or a printed book. 

As a life-long historian, my mother would be proud of my efforts on this project, and I hope you are too.

To Austin Women: If you would like to be involved in the project to restore and update the history of Austin women, please email me at sueannwadecrouse@gmail.com.

This photo of the 1986-87 Austin Commission for Women was taken following the ceremony, and includes (top row r-l) Ann Kitchens, Barbara Forman, Peggy Vasquez, Margaret Glendinning, SueAnn Wade-Crouse, Beverly Larkam, Gloria Hill Black, (bottom row r-l) Jean Zurow, Kay Keesee, and Pat Gamboa.

Cluster Critiques

The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters

The Paying Guests author Sarah Waters (pictured) could make the squashing of a cockroach sound romantic, sexy, intriguing and tragic. Her softly explicit descriptions of sexual escapades went on for pages, making me uncomfortably warm.

And then she made me see oozing brains and smell blood, and had me nervously flipping through the pages practically desperate to know if the main characters would survive a horrific back-alley abortion, a murder investigation, a trial, one character’s fragile and pale as antique lace weakness, threatening daily to confess everything. 

Good gaud, I’m reliving the tension just writing about it. The Paying Guest is chocked full of surprises you’d never guess!

Read it. You won’t be sorry.

Euphoria by Lilly King

If you do not read another book I recommend from 2014, read Euphoria.  I heard about this book through Kirkus, and the moment I read that it was about a woman Anthropologist studying in New Guinea in the 1930’s, I knew  the story must have some connection to Margaret Mead, and I was right.  

I’ve never done this before, but because I loved the Washington Post Ron Charles’ review so much, and because it so closely mirrors my thoughts about Euphoria, rather than write my own review, I’m going to provide excerpts from his review below. I will say, however, that I suspect that Euphoria will be one of the top three fiction books of the year for me. 

Blandly scrolling through salacious tweets from nubile pop stars, we can hardly imagine the thrill of Margaret Mead’s revelations in 1928. More than 80 years ago, at a time when ... movies could only show the “tragic” consequences of premarital sex, Mead published Coming of Age in Samoa. Her study of the psychosexual development of adolescents on the island of Ta’u confronted a self-satisfied United States, where it was still possible to speak of one’s parochial mores as natural and, of course, superior. 

More Cluster Critiques

Delicious!: A Novel by Ruth Reichl

Ruth Reichl (pictured), one of the world’s foremost food critics (NY Times, LA Times, etc.), editor of Gourmet magazine for 15 years, and co-owner of the famed The Swallow Restaurant, has written some of my favorite books about food and cooking, i.e., Tender at the Bone, Comfort Me With Apples, Garlic and Sapphires. Now, apparently inspired by the surprise closing of Gourmet magazine by publisher Condé Nast, Reichl made the bold move into the world of fiction with her first novel Delicious! Kirkus Reviews describes the novel as “a bittersweet pudding with some lumps in the batter,” and The Washington Post says it is “a surprisingly amateurish performance for a writer as skilled and versatile as Reichl.” But I’m going to cut her some slack and say that I thought it was pretty tasty.

Main character Billie Breskin, having lived her life in the shadow of her prettier, smarter sister, is a bit of a wallflower, but one blessed with what NPR cleverly coined as “the culinary equivalent of perfect pitch.” Billie can distinguish flavors like nobody’s business, which ultimately lands her a day job for a food magazine called Delicious, which is housed in an old Greenwich Village mansion with secret rooms and a juicy history. Billie also gets a weekend gig at an eclectic cheese shop in Little Italy. Both settings provide a ton of ingredients for characters and stories that will keep you salivating, including a series of very old letters from a young food prodigy to James Beard that Billie discovers catalogued in a manner requiring “Sherlock-ian” skills; and the roguishly handsome “grumpy complainer” that frequents the cheese shop and ends up being an architectural historian (and a good kisser).

I’m not sure why Reichl chose to write about a twenty-something girl, and if I have any complaint, it’s that the story tends to feel a little angst-y at times. But just about the time it gets annoying, Reichl springs a new story flavor and you forgive her. Delicious! isn’t really, but it is pretty yummy.

The Elephant Whisperer: My Life with the Herd in the African Wild by Lawrence Anthony, Graham Spence

Around 1982-83, when I was managing a small mountain retreat in New Mexico belonging to some eccentric  horse lovers, I hosted a couple that ran (what was at the time) the Harare Game Reserve in Zimbabwe South Africa.  Their stories of life in Africa sounded exceptionally exotic and dangerous and forever sparked my interest in that part of the world. So when I saw The Elephant Whisperer profiled on one of the several websites I troll daily looking for good reads, I knew I had to read it and I’m glad I did.

If not for books, I would probably never know what it was like to live in the wilds of Africa, surrounded by animals intent upon eating me or stomping me into the turf. Author Lawrence Anthony safely transported me to those parts of the world and that lifestyle, beautifully conveying his love and respect for the wildlife in Africa. The Elephant Whisperer tells a touching story of Anthony adopting a pack of rogue elephants with a reputation for violence, and if not saved by Anthony, would have been put down.

Although one might assume that caring for elephants is as simple as building a strong fence, that is not the case. Elephants are smarter than the average bear, and they don’t like being fenced in. And so the struggle ensues with Anthony trying to balance the enforcer and the animal lover in himself. After many adventures and a few tragedies, man and elephant find a peaceful place for coexisting, and the reader learns a lot about elephants, elephants and humans, and about living in Africa.  

I so thoroughly enjoyed The Elephant Whisperer that I sought out another of Anthony’s books. Babylon’s Ark, a heart-wrenching tale of how he and a small and scraggly army of British and Iraq civilians, and a surly band of American soldiers, worked through horrifying circumstances over a period of weeks to rescue the abandoned, starving, ill and injured animals in the Bagdad Zoo just following the American invasion of Bagdad. I recommend both of these books, especially if you have an interest in animal conservation, or if you just like a good story.