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-Make Andrew s graduation announcement
Almost everything on my list needed the computer to get done. Down near the bottom of my list was decorate Josie s birthday cake. I had baked the cake the day before and I had already researched how to decorate it. All I needed to do was actually finish it. So that s what I did in the half-darkness of my dining room while I waited for the power to come back on.
Funny how the power goes out when it s stormy so you have little natural light to make up for the lack of electricity. Oh, well. I think my cake turned out alright, anyway. Josie liked it so much that she didn t want to have birthday candles ruin it. We sang to her without candles.
Last modified on Thu 11 Mar 2021 08.56 EST
The last words of “Diving into the Wreck”, the title poem in the 1973 collection by the great American feminist thinker, poet and essayist Adrienne Rich, are these: “a book of myths / in which / our names do not appear.” I can’t remember when I first read the poem – certainly not when it was written, I’d have been only 10 or 11. More likely in the early 80s, when living away from home for the first time, in those heady days of “discovering” feminism, of Reclaim the Night marches, of consciousness-raising groups. That’s when I learned – rather late in the day – to look at the world through a wider lens, to read more widely and to seek out books not on the syllabus. To listen to different voices, learn from other times. To attempt to stand in other people’s shoes.
Born: 1805 in Kingston, Jamaica (as Mary Jane Grant)
Died: 14 May 1881 in London, England
Also known as: Mother Seacole
What was Mary Seacole famous for?
She is best known for her work during the Crimean War, where she cared for injured soldiers. But she was also well-known as a hotelier, traveller and author – a celebrity of the Victorian era. Today she is lauded as a role model, and in 2004 was voted the greatest black Briton in an internet poll.
Was Mary Seacole a nurse?
She had no formal British medical training, but had knowledge of traditional Afro-Caribbean medicines taught to her by her mother, a ‘doctress’.