Relationships and Going Places

Jo Freeman Writes: Fr Walter founded the Selma Inter-Religious Project, a support organization for civil rights activists. He and his wife lived in Tuscaloosa, probably the most racially liberal town in Alabama. One of his main projects was turning the Freedom Quilting Bee, a co-operative established by local black women, into a major business. With his New York ties, Walter was able to send the quilts to NYC to be auctioned. Publicity and promotion led to munificent prices which the Alabama women used to improve their lives and that of their children. The business lasted until 2012. more »

Kristin Nord Writes: As a young widow of means my mother would restart her life again in midlife, packing up the contents of her house this time and relocating from Grosse Pointe to Bucks County, PA. I suspect she must have decided early on — as someone who had not suffered during The Great Depression — that she would volunteer rather than engage in a career for money. Yet she did so nonetheless for a rather astonishing 40 years at the little library in New Hope, PA. Some of the choices my mother and mother-in-law made were dictated by circumstance, but they came at a time when they might still have been discouraged from truly pursuing careers of their own. more »

Almost every official who spoke with KHN said universities will open their classrooms and their dorms this fall. In many cases, they no longer can afford not to. But controlling those environments and limiting viral spread loom among the largest challenges in many schools’ histories — and the notion of what constitutes normalcy is again being adjusted in real time. The university officials predicted significantly increased on-campus activity, but with limits. Most of the schools expect to have students living on campus but attending only some classes in person or attending only on selected days — one way to stagger the head count and to limit classroom exposure. And all plan to have vaccines and plenty of testing available. more »

"The consumer revolution of the mid-nineteenth century led to an explosion of available fashion goods at increasingly affordable prices. More middle- and even working-class women could buy industrially produced accessories; however, this accessibility created class tensions between the aspirational and those who had traditionally participated in luxury fashion... Social commentators judged women as extravagant or ruinous by the style of their hats, marked morality by the cleanliness of their gloves, and condemned by the vulgar color of their shoes. more »