Doris O'Brien is a retired college Speech teacher and banker. She has published two books of humor (Up or Down With Women's Liberation and Humor Me a Little) and for many years contributed light verse to the Pepper 'n Salt column of the Wall Street Journal. She is an avid writer of letters to the editors.
Doris celebrated her 50th wedding anniversary in the same year she welcomed her first grandchild. She now lives in Pasadena with a great view of the San Gabriel mountains — and the annual Tournament of Roses Parade.
She can be reached by e-mail: witsendob at (@) gmail.com
Jo Freeman Reviews Charlayne Hunter-Gault's My People: Five Decades of Writing About Black Lives
Jo Freeman reviews My People: Five Decades of Writing About Black Lives by Charlayne Hunter-Gault; nine republished pieces are about Africa and another nine are about different aspects of her personal life in the US – a stay in Harlem when she was five, returning to U.Ga nine years after she integrated it, vacationing in Martha’s Vineyard. Eleven are on women. She interviewed the famous (e.g. Nelson Mandela), the infamous (e.g. the Black Panthers) and the not famous (her grandmother). more »
At New York's Morgan Ahead: Claude Gillot, Satire in the Age of Reason and Sublime Ideas, Drawings by Giovanni Battista Piranesi
"Enheduanna and Women of Mesopotamia, ca. 3400-2000 B.C. brings together for the first time a comprehensive selection of artworks that capture rich and shifting expressions of women’s lives in ancient Mesopotamia during the 3rd millennium B.C. These works bear testament to women’s roles in religious contexts as goddesses, priestesses, and worshippers as well as in social, economic and political spheres as mothers, workers, and rulers. Claude Gillot: Satire in the Age of Reason explores the artist’s inventive and highly original draftsmanship and places his work in the context of the artistic and intellectual activity in Paris at the dawn of a new century." more »
GAO, Financial Services Industry: Overview of Representation of Minorities and Women and Practices to Promote Diversity
"EEOC data (for 2018 – 2020) showed representation for both minorities and women was relatively flat or marginally increased. Black and Hispanic representation remained at about 3 and 4 percent, respectively. Female representation increased from 31 to 32 percent in that period. Representatives of financial services firms and other stakeholders with whom GAO spoke for the November 2017 report (GAO-18-64) described challenges in recruiting and retaining members of minority groups and women. They also identified practices that could help address the challenges, including recruiting students from a broad group of schools and academic disciplines and establishing management-level accountability to achieve diversity goals." more »
Jo Freeman Writes: Why There Is a Run-Off Election in Georgia on December 6th
Jo Freeman writes: "Georgia is one of only two states to require that elections be won by at least 50 percent of the vote. Neither Democrat Raphael Warnock nor Republican Herschel Walker received the necessary 50 percent in the November general election, when only 57 percent of Georgia voters cast a ballot. It’s ironic that both are Black men because the original purpose of the requirement for an absolute majority was to keep any Black person from being elected to high office. An electoral procedure crafted to keep Blacks out of higher office now requires that Georgia voters choose between two Black men to be their US Senator. In August of 2021 former NFL player Herschel Walker moved his residence from Texas to Georgia so he could run in the Republican primary for Senate. That’s why there will be a run-off election in Georgia on December 6." more »
