Debbie Levy's Blog, page 5

Glorious, Not-Furious RBG

For this, the second entry in the Glorious RBG blog series, I bring you Not-Furious RBG.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg has lived her life and built her career fending off and disagreeing with those who would dismiss her and her ideas. I titled the book I Dissent for a reason! But with all her disagreeing, she has avoided being disagreeable. Whether by dint of personality or strategy, RBG’s approach to all the stuff that has been hurled her way has been serene and charitable.

Two examples of Not-Furious RBG:

“Sometimes people say unkind or thoughtless things, and when they do, it is best to be a little hard of hearing–to tune out and not snap back in anger or impatience.”

– RBG essay in Marlo Thomas’ collection of essays, The Right Words at the Right Time

And here is RBG’s take on Supreme Court justices of the 1950s and 1960s, an era when courts viewed discrimination against women as perfectly lawful and beneficial to society:

“I don’t think they regarded discrimination against women as discrimination at all. These were people who thought they were good fathers, they were good husbands, and they didn’t understand barriers that women faced as discriminatory. They really bought into the protective notion that if there are distinctions–women don’t have to serve on juries–then it was for their benefit, for their protection.”

– RBG quoted in Jeffrey Toobin, “Heavyweight,” The New Yorker, March 13, 2013

What a great role model: Don’t let yourself be provoked into being less than your thoughtful and considerate self. If you find yourself in opposition to someone, try to understand where that person’s point of view is coming from–in other words, don’t simply assume bad faith or stupidity.

And then go do what you gotta do. Glorious, Not-Furious RBG.

Next time: Not-Spurious RBG. See you next week.

(Photo credit: Eric Bronson, Michigan Photography)

 

Glorious, Adorious* RBG

Adorious* RBG:

Need I say more? I mean, look at that picture.

But I’ll say more.

I’m sure you’ve heard of the Internet sensation, “Notorious RBG”–the meme that started as a Tumblr that turned into a book by Irin Carmon and Shana Knizhnik.

So, say you’re a fan of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, or interested in knowing more about her. Say you want to introduce her to a young person in your life. One month from today, on September 20, 2016, I can help you with that. That’s the publication date for my picture book, I Dissent: Ruth Bader Ginsburg Makes Her Mark, illustrated by the excellent Elizabeth Baddeley.

And before then? I’ll be sharing some good stuff about RBG here on this blog. I asked myself, what shall I title this series of posts? “Notorious” is taken. And more to the point, “Notorious” doesn’t seem quite on point when your audience includes children. Yet I can’t deny that Notorious RBG has a nice ring.

But . . . so does Glorious RBG! And there are many other fine adjectives that describe Ruth Bader Ginsburg–all with that same pleasing ring.

So we start with this: Adorious* RBG. Because she is. And was. The photographic evidence speaks for itself. And now a few words to  demonstrate that this adorious quality is not merely skin-deep:

A. She can tell a joke:

“What is the difference between a bookkeeper in New York’s garment district and a U.S. Supreme Court justice?

One generation.” **

Ba-da-bing. Adorious, no?

B. She can make legal history fun. When she was teaching at Rutgers Law School, she heard of complaints from female schoolteachers who had been forced out of their jobs once their pregnancies began to show. “After all,” Adorious RBG said years later when reflecting on that time, “the children must be spared the thought that their teacher had swallowed a watermelon.” ***

C. She has a perfectly charming signature phrase: “ever so much.” As in, the written brief in a case “is ever so much more important” than the oral argument. As in, “the response that I got from the judges before whom I argued when I talked about sex discrimination was ‘What are you talking about? Women are treated ever so much better than men.’” As in, “It is ever so much easier to have a conversation” about a judicial opinion among three judges than among twelve justices. As in, when she went to Cornell, which had four men to every woman, “the women in my class were ever so much smarter than the men.”****

Finally, my favorite, from RBG’s acceptance remarks when President Bill Clinton announced her nomination to the Supreme Court in 1993: “I have been aided by . . . a daughter and son with the taste to appreciate that Daddy cooks ever so much better than Mommy and so phased me out of the kitchen at a relatively early age.”

Glorious, Adorious RBG. Next up: Not-Furious RBG.

Feel free to subscribe to this blog–don’t miss a single glorious post!–by filling in the form below, “Signup for email notifications.” I’ll be posting Glorious RBG items about twice a week leading up to publication day for I Dissent.

* Watchful readers will observe that adorious is not, yet, a word. And I say I’m pitching this as something to be shared with impressionable young minds? Yes! A teachable moment: see neologism.

** From an interview in “The Jewish Americans,” PBS Series.

*** From an interview transcribed in the Ohio State Law Journal (2009).

**** I could footnote these RBG quotations as well; I’m a lawyer and that’s what lawyers do. But enough. Send me an email if you want the sources!

(Photo of Justice Ginsburg is by Sebastian King for TIME; photos of younger RBG are from the Supreme Court of the United States collection.)

 

 

 

Hello, Ilomantis Ginsburgae!

This headline from The Washington Post tells the story:

Yes, scientist have discovered a new type of praying mantis and they have named it for Glorious RBG for two reasons: (1) to honor Ginsburg’s lifelong efforts toward gender equality, because, in a departure from previous practice, they based the identification of the new insect on examination of its female genitalia, rather than the same-old technique of using the male parts, and (2) because the new species’ neck plate is said to look like Justice Ginsburg’s famed jabots, or collars, that she wears over her judicial robe.

I don’t see a jabot resemblance–

–but maybe I’m not looking closely enough at the insect’s neck. Anyway, hail, Ilomantis ginsburgae!

You Never Know Who You Might Meet At A Bookstore

Last Saturday I had a book event at a nearby Barnes & Noble, the one in Rockville, MD. Not too many people came. That was all right. It didn’t surprise me for this event; nothing personal. But the B&N staff were friendly and fun, and the few people who did stop by got my undivided attention. It was fine. It was about to get even finer.

A woman came to the display, a lovely older woman. She drives to this particular B&N, pretty far from where she lives, on a regular basis because she likes it; she finds the staff so nice and helpful. I had brought a bunch of my books and forthcoming books with me to the store, not just the book B&N was featuring that day. She looked at everything and we chatted about this and that. She said she wanted to buy The Year of Goodbyes, the story of my mother’s childhood in Germany, because she thought a granddaughter would like it. She asked the bookseller if the store had it in stock, and they went off to the store computer to look it up.

A few minutes later they came back. The book wasn’t on the shelves, but the woman–Nancy is her name–had ordered it. Now she had in hand the print-out of the book description from the B&N website. She sat down and pointed to my mother’s name, “Jutta Salzberg,” and said, “I went to junior high with her. I went to junior high with your mother.” It was easy to be certain, given Mom’s unusual name.

They attended Paul Junior High here in D.C. Only junior high, not high school. After Paul Junior High they never saw one  other again. Nancy remembered Mom having a slight accent, since my mother at that time had been in the U.S. only about a year. This would have been 1939 or 1940. She said that she, Nancy, was brand-new to D.C. at the time, having moved from Philadelphia, and the other kids weren’t nice to her. But, she said, my mother and my mother’s best friend—“Beverly,” she said, and I knew that name from my mother’s history—took her under their wing and were friendly and made her feel better. We both tried to remember Beverly’s last name, but couldn’t.

Oh my goodness. We hugged like long-lost friends. Everyone in hearing distance was almost as tickled as we were. She is 88. She drives herself where she wants to go, uses a cane that looks just like my mother’s did (one of those drugstore canes with a cheerful colorful design printed on it), and is steady as can be. We didn’t want to say goodbye. When the book comes in and she returns to the B&N, she will email me so I can go there and meet her again to sign it.

We finally did say goodbye. Three minutes later, she came back. “Shulman,” she said. “Beverly Shulman.” Yup, it was. Beverly is in my mother’s poesiealbum.

See, you never know who you might meet at a bookstore.

Pennsylvania’s Preferred Pooch!

Yes, I have a weakness for alliteration, and what that p-packed post heading signifies is that Dozer’s Run has won another state book award: the Keystone to Reading Elementary Book Award, bestowed by Pennsylvania’s Keystone State Reading Association. Participating Pennsylvania primary students have voted, and my true story about Dozer the gallant Goldendoodle is their favorite! Thanks, you precious Pennsylvanians! Thanks, Team Dozer! (That would be illustrator David Opie, Dozer himself, and Dozer’s mom, Rosana Panza, in the adjacent photo.)

Top Dog in Kansas!

The Kansas Reading Association has announced the winner of the 2016 Bill Martin, Jr. Picture Book Award, and it’s none other than Dozer’s Run: A True Story of A Dog and His Race. Dozer, that intrepid Goldendoodle who is the hero of my 2014 picture book, has run his way into the hearts of book-loving people of the Sunflower State. I am pleased as can be. Dave Opie made Dozer come alive with his illustrations, and Rosana Panza shared his story with me. It’s their award, too!

A Cake For Glorious RBG

Today is Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s 83rd birthday, and perhaps you would like to bake her a suitable cake. You could do worse than to consult the recipes in a little book published by the Supreme Court Historical Society. It’s called Chef Supreme: Martin Ginsburg, and it’s a compilation of  the recipes of RBG’s late husband, the eminent tax lawyer and gourmet cook Martin Ginsburg. Flip to page 100, where you’ll find Decadent Chocolate Bombe, the recipe for which requires four pages, usefully divided into separate sections: “The Cake,” “The Cocoa Syrup,” “The Ground Almonds,” “The Mousse,” “Chocolate Sauce,” “Chocolate Glaze,” etc.

As Marty wrote in his introduction to the extremely complicated recipe, “Only a crazy person would try to make this dessert in a single day.” The cookbook is laced with such bons mots, making it a delightful read. (Another example from the Chocolate Bombe recipe: “[W]hen you press down with your warm hand on the bottom . . . of the bowl, the frozen mousse will slide right out onto the cake round.” New paragraph: “Probably it will not.”)

So–maybe you shouldn’t attempt this cake today, unless you’re already a master baker. Here’s another idea: You could celebrate RBG’s big day by clicking over to the audio of the oral argument in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, which the Supreme Court heard on March 2. You’ll hear Justice Ginsburg there in fine form, especially starting around minute 38.

Happy birthday, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

How To Get Your RBG Fix

A couple of days ago, Newsweek magazine reported that Simon & Schuster will be publishing a collection of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s writings next year, entitled My Own Words. The magazine also singled out my forthcoming I Dissent: Ruth Bader Ginsburg Makes Her Mark, as a way for fans to get their RBG fix. I heartily concur!

‘I Dissent’ Preview!

Thanks to the good people of Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, I have pages to share (!!!) from my forthcoming book, I Dissent: Ruth Bader Ginsburg Makes Her Mark. Click the page image below to link to the online catalog for the preview:

The final book will include small changes, including minor edits to the page spread about the friendship between Justice Ginsburg and Justice Scalia in view of his recent death. But what you see in the catalog is very close to the final pages as they’ll appear in the book when it’s published in the fall.

Glorious RBG!

A Cover For Ruth (Glorious RBG)

I’m excited to post the cover for I Dissent, my picture book about Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a.k.a. Glorious RBG. The book is illustrated by Elizabeth Baddeley, and I love what she’s done, so I’m putting the cover here as big as I can:

Now, back to this “a.k.a. Glorious RBG” thing that I casually dropped there at the top of this post. I know, you know, we all know “Notorious RBG”–the Internet meme that started as a Tumblr that turned into a book. I enjoy “Notorious RBG.” But “Notorious” isn’t quite the moniker I’m going for in introducing RBG to children. I  like . . . Glorious RBG! I’ll be writing a series of posts about Glorious RBG–about Glorious, Adorious, Meritorious, So Curious, Not Furious (etc.) RBG between now and publication of I Dissent this fall. Starting soon. You can sign up below to receive email notices when the posts go up.

I Dissent: Ruth Bader Ginsburg Makes Her Mark will be published by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers on September 20, 2016.