by Michele Genthon | Aug 13, 2014 | MUSINGS, Reading
One hundred years ago a woman Martha Graham described as a “plump little lady with the dynamism of a rocket” founded the Cornish School in Seattle. Today it is a college of the arts, but in its beginnings all ages were nurtured there. Nellie Cornish believed that the...
by Michele Genthon | Jul 16, 2014 | MUSINGS, Reading
Elizabeth Warren’s A Fighting Chance is must reading for all American citizens but especially for mothers, for dog lovers, and for anyone who thinks they have gotten a raw deal from those who control this country’s economy. The book is like a rolling ocean wave. It...
by Michele Genthon | Mar 3, 2013 | MUSINGS, Reading
Living in the West has peaked my interest in the women who came across our country in wagon trains, and my curiosity about their lives drew me to the movie Meek’s Cutoff. It is the story of a small group of westward-ho adventurers who wander, lost in the Oregon...
by Michele Genthon | Feb 17, 2013 | MUSINGS, Reading
When The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan was published in 1963 women who read it gave copies to their friends. Similarly, a friend loaned me A Strange Stirring by Stephanie Coontz, a recent book about the influence of The Feminine Mystique. While the title of...
by Michele Genthon | Oct 10, 2012 | MUSINGS, Reading
History is not what happens around us. It is the things remembered by those who write it down. While reading Wench by Dolen Perkins-Valdez, this fact struck me full force once again. This novel, about the relationships between slaves, is set in the free state of...
by Michele Genthon | Feb 8, 2012 | MUSINGS, Reading
The book Mrs. Nixon: A Novelist Imagines a Life provoked my thinking about women’s stories. I read the book because I was intrigued by the title, imagining an autobiography with an imaginative twist. I was surprised to find that Mrs. Nixon was simply the...
