IWOTA #12 Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Thompson Norris was born in San Francisco in 1880.

Wikipedia states: “She was one of the most widely read and highest paid female writers in the United States for nearly fifty years, from 1911 to 1959.”

For her mastery of English, I name her an Indigenous Woman Of The Anglosphere. (IWOTA)

Here’s why:

“Disconnecting from change does not recapture the past. It loses the future.”

“In spite of the cost of living, it’s still popular.”

“Peace – that was the other name for home.”

“Like faith, marriage is a mystery. The person you’re committed to spending your life with is known and yet unknown, at the same time remarkably intimate and necessarily other. The classic seven-year itch may not be a case of familiarity breeding ennui and contempt, but the shock of having someone you thought you knew all too well suddenly seem a stranger. When that happens, you are compelled to either recommit to the relationship or get the hell out. There are many such times in a marriage.”

“I was taught that I had to ‘master’ subjects. But who can ‘master’ beauty, or peace, or joy?”

“We can’t give our children the future, strive though we may to make it secure. But we can give them the present.”

Kathleen Norris died in her son’s San Francisco home at the age of 85 in 1966.

God Bless America.

Geoff Fox, October 27, 2023, Down Under

IWOTA #10 Joy Davidman

Bronx child prodigy and poet Joy Davidman was born in New York City in 1915 and died in Oxford, England, aged 45, in 1960. Davidman was a convert from communism to Christianity during a troubled marriage, after which she moved to England and found her second and final husband, writer and theologian, C.S. Lewis.

For her great command of words I name her an Indigenous Woman Of The Anglosphere.

She wrote:

“We sucked in atheism with our canned milk.”

“What war did for him (hasten disillusionment with communism), childbirth did for me. I began to notice what neglected, neurotic waifs the children of Communists were and to question the genuineness of the love of mankind that didn’t begin at home.”

Perhaps motherhood taught her of our need for connection:

“See yourself in the mirror, you’re separate from yourself. See the world in the mirror, you’re separate from the world. I don’t want that separation anymore.”

“Being a fool for God was not merely alright but liberating.”

She was a beautiful woman in more ways than one.

God Bless Wives And Mums

Geoff Fox, former Registered Midwife, October 25, 2023, Down Under

Previous Indigenous Women Of The Anglosphere include Shirley Temple, Mary Astor, Audrey Hepburn, Rosa Parks, Mrs Patrick Campbell, Virginia Satir, Lady Gregory and Gertrude Bell

The topmost word art above is based on an image by Pompeo Batoni (25 January 1708 – 4 February 1787).

Phyllis Schlafly Month #2 IWOTA #21

For the brilliance of her thought, I name Phyllis Schlafly an Indigenous Woman Of The Anglosphere (IWOTA).

Here are some examples:

“Any judge who allows an adulterer with a live-in girlfriend to terminate the life of his wife should be impeached.”

“Suppose the pay gap between men and women were magically eliminated. If that happened, simple arithmetic suggests that half of women would be unable to find what they regard as a suitable mate.”

“What I am defending is the real rights of women. A woman should have the right to be in the home as a wife and mother.”

“I think the main goal of the feminist movement was the status degradation of the full-time homemaker. They really wanted to get all women out of the homes and into the workforce. And again and again, they taught that the only fulfilling lifestyle was to be in the workforce reporting to a boss instead of being in the home reporting to a husband.”

“You can’t be an American if you don’t speak English. Our public schools should be mandated to teach all children in English.”

“Anyone with a child knows that children learn about the world through binary options: up or down, hot or cold, big or little, inside or outside, wet or dry, good or bad, boy or girl, man or woman.”

“History offers no evidence for the proposition that the assignment of women to military combat jobs is the way to win wars, improve combat readiness, or promote national security.”

“No country in history ever sent mothers of toddlers off to fight enemy soldiers until the United States did this in the Iraq war.”

God Bless Phyllis Schlafly

Geoff Fox, midwife, 22nd September, 2013

Previous Indigenous Women Of The Anglosphere include Shirley Temple, Patsy Cline, Audrey Hepburn, Rosa Parks, Barbara Stanwyck, Twiggy, Tammy Bruce, Yvonne De Carlo, Mary Astor, Mrs Patrick Campbell, Virginia Satir, Lady Gregory, Joy Davidman and Gertrude Bell

IWOTA #20 Twiggy

Twiggy, a.k.a. Dame Lesley Lawson, DBE, was a very unusual 1960’s fashion model, who was born on the 19th of September, 1949, in northwest suburban London to working class parents.

For the brilliance of her thought, I name her an Indigenous Woman Of The Anglosphere (IWOTA).

Here are some examples from her slightly strange and unique mind:

“Confusion is the best form of communication. It’s left to be unexplained.”

“Always be natural. Putting on airs will make a giggle out of you. Be yourself and if you don’t know something say so.”

“I want to continue to try and break the barrier between male and female.”

“I think everyone should sing – it’s so good for you, as it makes you breathe deeply, and it’s good for you emotionally, too. It’s a brilliant release way of lifting the spirits.”

“Life is about making choices: you can either spend three quid on a glossy magazine or you can spend it clearing three square metres of minefield and help give people their lives back. As simple as that.”

“Being young isn’t about age, it’s about being a free spirit. You can meet someone of 20 who’s boring and old, or you can meet someone of 70 who’s youthful and exciting. I met Fred Astaire when he was 72 and I was 21, and I fell in love with him. He certainly was a free spirit.”

“What happened to me in the Sixties was so major and so worldwide and so huge, there’s no way I can repeat it. But in a way, I had nothing to do with it, it just took me over. It was bizarre, it was weird, and I had no control over it. I don’t think anyone could have planned what happened to me.”

“I used to be a thing; I’m a person now.”

I find her thought quite brilliant.

Geoff Fox, 19th September, 2023, Down Under

Previous Indigenous Women Of The Anglosphere include Shirley Temple, Patsy Cline, Audrey Hepburn, Rosa Parks, Barbara Stanwyck, Tammy Bruce, Yvonne De Carlo, Mary Astor, Mrs Patrick Campbell, Virginia Satir, Lady Gregory, Joy Davidman and Gertrude Bell

IWOTA #19 Patsy Cline

Patsy Cline was born on the 8th of September, 1932, in Winchester, Virginia.

As her words attest, she is a country music great and, in my eyes, a significant Indigenous Woman Of The Anglosphere (IWOTA):

“You want me to act like we’ve never kissed, you want to forget; pretend we’ve never met , and I’ve tried and I’ve tried, but I haven’t yet… You walk by, and I fall to pieces.”

“I’m gonna walk a little bit of dog.”

“Oh, I offended you with my opinion? You should hear the the ones I keep to myself.”

“If you can’t do it with feeling – don’t.”

“I suppose I could have sat back and pitied myself. For a time I wondered if I’d ever be able to go on to a stage and perform again. After a couple of weeks I began to feel I could fight my way back to health if I put my mind to it. I thought to myself: ‘Pity never did anybody any good. Go on. Patsy, show ’em what you can do'”

“Jesus has been in my room. He has taken my hand and told me, No, Not now. I have other things for you to do.”

“Carnegie Hall was real fabulous, but you know, it ain’t as big as the Grand Ole Opry.”

“If I made a list of the people I admire, Mom would probably fill up half of it. She could do anything and everything.”

God Bless Patsy Cline

Geoff Fox, 8th September, 2023

Previous Indigenous Women Of The Anglosphere include Shirley Temple, Mary Astor, Audrey Hepburn, Rosa Parks, Barbara Stanwyck, Tammy Bruce, Yvonne De Carlo, Mrs Patrick Campbell, Virginia Satir, Lady Gregory, Joy Davidman and Gertrude Bell

IWOTA # 18 YVONNE De CARLO

Yvonne De Carlo was born on the 1st of September, 1922, in Vancouver, British Columbia. She said things about the role of women that were more commonplace in her day, but badly needed now. For that I call her an indigenous woman Of the Anglosphere. (IWOTA)

Universal Pictures producer Walter Wanger described her as “the most beautiful girl in the world.”

Cameramen voted her “Queen of Technicolor” three years in a row.

In my childhood she was famous on television as the vivacious Lily Munster.

In the New York times, Bosley Crowther  wrote of her performance in “Salome, Where She Danced” (1945): “Miss De Carlo has an agreeable mezzo-soprano singing voice, all the ‘looks’ one girl could ask for, and, moreover, she dances with a sensuousness which must have caused the Hays office some anguish.”

De Carlo said, “I was named Margaret Yvonne. ‘Margaret’ because my mother was very fond of one of the derivatives of the name. She was fascinated at the time by the movie star Baby Peggy, and I suppose she wanted a Baby Peggy of her own ……. My mother was the shaping force in my life. Don’t ask me how but she always had money for my dancing lessons. She was convinced I was going to be somebody.”

and:

“I’m all for men and I think they ought to stay up there and be the bosses, and have women wait on them hand and foot and put their slippers on and hand them the pipe and serve seven-course meals; as long as they open the door, support the woman, and do their duty in the bedroom, et cetera.”

De Carlo was an active Republican who campaigned for Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford.

God Bless Freedom And Women Who Understand Traditional Men.

Geoff Fox, February 3, 2023, Down Under

Previous Indigenous Women Of The Anglosphere include Shirley Temple, Mary Astor, Audrey Hepburn, Rosa Parks, Barbara Stanwyck, Tammy Bruce, Anne Boleyn, Mrs Patrick Campbell, Virginia Satir, Lady Gregory, Joy Davidman and Gertrude Bell

IWOTA #17 Anne Boleyn

Anne Boleyn was a beautiful woman (the above image shows actress  Genevieve Bujold playing Anne in 1969’s for Anne of the Thousand Days) who died for an effectively polygamous man, Henry the VIIIth. In 1532, on September the first, he made Anne the Marquess of Pembroke in her own right. Henry created this title for her.

These words attributed to her suggest she was very much a woman who was ready for a man: “Seduce me. Write letters to me. And poems, I love poems. Ravish me with your words. Seduce me.”

Previously, after having an affair with Anne’s sister Mary, Henry the 8th’s desire for women turned towards Anne. She was a maid of honour to Henry’s wife, Catherine, and resisted his pursuit. When the Pope would not annul Henry’s marriage, Henry worked with Oliver Cromwell Henry to break the Catholic Church’s power in England and close their monasteries and nunneries.

When Henry did not have a son by Anne to be heir to his throne he had her executed.

She spoke these words about her fate: “Good Christian people, I am come hither to die, for according to the law, and by the law I am judged to die, and therefore I will speak nothing against it. I am come hither to accuse no man, nor to speak anything of that, whereof I am accused and condemned to die.”

She did not consider herself guilty: “O Death, rock me asleep, bring me to quiet rest, let pass my weary guiltless ghost out of my careful breast.”

Subsequent ages judged her to be a martyr and heroine on the English Reformation. For her insightful command of English, I name her an Indigenous Woman Of The Anglosphere (IWOTA).

Henry was troubled by the terrible way he treated her all his life.

This is a great argument against the over concentration of too much power in one man.

Geoff Fox 1st September, 2023, Down Under

Previous Indigenous Women Of The Anglosphere include Shirley Temple, Mary Astor, Audrey Hepburn, Rosa Parks, Barbara Stanwyck, Tammy Bruce,Mrs Patrick Campbell, Virginia Satir, Lady Gregory, Joy Davidman and Gertrude Bell

IWOTA #16 Tammy Bruce

Conservative writer and broadcaster Tammy Bruce was born on August 20, 1962, in Los Angeles.

For her wonderful breakthrough insights in English, I name her an Indigenous Woman Of The Anglosphere (IWOTA). For instance:

“No matter how noble the original intentions, the seductions of power can turn any movement from one seeking equal rights to one that would deny them to others.”

“When your victimhood is your empowerment, recovery is the enemy, and working on ‘individual change’ becomes counterproductive, even dangerous to your identity.”

“One of the goals of the Feminist Elite is to reinforce to women the idea that men are obsolete.”

“Gone are the days when reality fed the feminist movement.”

“For women who turn to welfare, Big Brother becomes Husband.”

I see here the seeds of a fourth wave of feminism.

Geoff Fox, former midwife, Down Under, 20th August, 2023, Australian time

The peice of word art above consists of words added by me to a photo authored by Gage Skidmore and this new word art is published by me under a creative commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

IWOTA #15 Emma Lazarus

Poet Emma Lazarus was born on July 22nd, 1849 in New York City.

She is most famous for writing:

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

For this alone, I could call her a legitimate Indigenous Woman Of The Anglosphere (IWOTA), but it wasn’t the only good thought she ever wrote down. Here are some others:

“Let our first care today be the re-establishment of our physical strength, the reconstruction of our national organism, so that in future, where the respect due to us cannot be won by entreaty, it may be commanded, and where it cannot be commanded, it may be enforced.” (This insight is from two centuries ago, but for me it addresses what modern PC crap is doing to us now.) FR Sounds pretty MAGA to me.

Again, the following couplet could be about the cancerous ideologies eating away at us in the West today: “There is no comfort looking forth nor back, The present gives the lie to all her past.”

“Until we are all free, we are none of us free.”

“Naught is too small and soft to turn and sting.”

“The little and the great are joined in one By God’s great force. The wondrous golden sun Is linked unto the glow-worm’s tiny spark; The eagle soars to heaven in his flight; And in those realms of space, all bathed in light, Soar none except the eagle and the lark.”

“Still ours the dance, the feast, the glorious Psalm, The mystic lights of emblem, and the Word.”

God Bless Emma Lazarus, a good looking woman and, IMHO, a very important poet and thinker.

Geoff Fox, July 23, 2023, Down Under

Previous Indigenous Women Of The Anglosphere include Shirley Temple, Mary Astor, Audrey Hepburn, Rosa Parks, Barbara Stanwyck, Jane Austen, Mrs Patrick Campbell, Virginia Satir, Lady Gregory, Joy Davidman and Gertrude Bell

IWOTA #14 Jane Austen

Jane Austen, who died at 41 years of age on the 18th of July, 1817, might be one of the most conservative writers ever. For me her writing makes her a wonderful Indigenous Woman Of The Anglosphere. (IWOTA)

“Sense and Sensibility” (published in 1811) is set in the 1790’s in southern England, while the Reign Of Terror gripped France and while Vermont, Kentucky, and Tennessee became states in America.

“It isn’t what we say or think that defines us, but what we do.” (Sense And Sensibility)

“Elinor could sit still no longer. She almost ran out of the room, and as soon as the door was closed, burst into tears of joy, which at first she thought would never cease.” (Sense And Sensibility)

“I wish, as well as everybody else, to be perfectly happy; but, like everybody else, it must be in my own way.” (Sense And Sensibility)

“I will be calm. I will be mistress of myself.” (Sense And Sensibility\

“Know your own happiness.” (Sense And Sensibility)

Pride And Prejudice (1813) is set in fictional Meryton in Hertfordshire in the early 1900’s.

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” (Pride And Prejudice)

“A lady’s imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.” (Pride And Prejudice)

“I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine.” (Pride And Prejudice)

“I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives.” (Persuasion, published posthumously in 1818)

In this novel, Austen created the following magnificent fictional commitment to monogamy:

“I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others. Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice, indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in F. W. (Captain Frederick Wentworth) ……. I must go, uncertain of my fate; but I shall return hither, or follow your party, as soon as possible. A word, a look, will be enough to decide whether I enter your father’s house this evening or never.” (Persuasion)

Austen could be sweet and devastatingly ironic:

“I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.” (From Austen’s letters)

“If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.” (Emma, 1815)

“I may have lost my heart, but not my self-control. ” (Emma)

Magnificent thoughts about what we human beings are.

Jane Austen.

Geoff Fox, 18th July, 2023, Down Under

Previous Indigenous Women Of The Anglosphere include Shirley Temple, Mary Astor, Audrey Hepburn, Rosa Parks, Barbara Stanwyck, Mrs Patrick Campbell, Virginia Satir, Lady Gregory, Joy Davidman and Gertrude Bell