Ruth Tenzer Feldman's Blog, page 17

Blue Thread: Award Finalist!

On behalf of the characters in Blue Thread, I have the honor of announcing that their story is a finalist for the 2013 Oregon Book Awards. The book is one of three that Literary Arts selected for the Leslie Bradshaw Award for Young Adult Literature. Winners will be announced April 8, but all the finalists will have a chance to meet readers in the Literary Arts tour of Oregon. Will you and I meet? I hope so!

Here’s a shout out to the Oregon Historical Society, the Oregon Jewish Museum, Kimberly...

My Choice for 2012, Yours for 2013

Dear Readers,

About this time last year, when Blue Thread was nearing publication and this blog was only a few months old, I made a commitment to donate a tenth of my writer’s income for 2012 to organizations that “help girls and women attain education, health, citizenship rights, housing, and the opportunity for a self-supporting livelihood.” I listed several of them on the Pursing Justice page. One of these organizations is Micah House, which I highlighted last March.

I had an opportunity to...

Look Who’s Here: 2013

Thanks to the meticulous savers at the Library of Congress, I can bring you this cover of Puck magazine from December 27, 1911. The caption reads: “LOOK WHO’S HERE!” Father Time is ushering out 1911, who appears to be startled, aghast, and amazed at the new year 1912. Instead of the usual chubby baby boy (for the literary-minded a “putto”) 1911 sees a tiny woman in hat, furs, and a sign that reads:

Happy New Year

Votes for Women

Now it’s 2013, a year and a century later. Oregon women did get the...

Suffragist L. Frank Baum Creates Santa

Here’s one more blog post on Santa before we head into 2013. Chances are the library in Blue Thread would have had The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, a popular book by L. Frank Baum, author of the Oz series. Published in 1902, the book gives us an entirely Oz-like version of Saint Nick, starting with being found as a baby in this magical forest:

Have you heard of the great Forest of Burzee? Nurse used to sing of it when I was a child. She sang of the big tree-trunks, standing close togeth...

Remembering the Civil War Santa

Thomas H. Nast

The images of Santa Claus that Miriam Josefsohn might have seen in Portland 1912 are not much different from those still popular today. During the first battles of the American Civil War, the extraordinary political cartoonist Thomas Nast (1840-1902) drew what he decided was the American version of Santa Claus. At that time, the Union Army of the North seemed to be losing the war. Nast wrapped this first Santa in the Stars and Stripes. Sympathetic to the Union cause and saddened...

Oregon’s First Woman Mayor

Clara Munson; OHS photo 012974

This isn’t a centennial celebration, but almost. On December 18, 1913, the residents of Warrenton, Oregon, a small town near the northwest tip of the state, chose Clara Cynthia Munson to be their next mayor. Someone had nominated her earlier that year, and a Mr. Dietrich decided to run as well, to protect the good citizens of Warrenton from a woman calling the shots. The finally tally: Munson, 38; Dietrich, 22.

Clara Munson (1861-1938) grew up in the lighthouses h...

Getting to the Bottom: Bloomers

Amelia Bloomer didn't design bloomers!

Last week we looked at tops that women cyclists might have worn a hundred years ago. Today we get to the bottom…which in the late 1800s and early 1900s were often bloomers. Bloomers–those baggy pants usually gathered at the bottom–are associated with Amelia Jenks Bloomer (1818-1894).

Bloomer edited The Lily, what’s believed to be the first newspaper in the United States directed at women. The Lily grew out of the temperance movement (educating the public o...

Bikes and More Bikes

Blue Thread didn’t have any scenes of Miriam riding her bicycle, but in her life beyond the story (and characters do have lives that don’t fit into the book) she loved to ride around her neighborhood on her bike. She was among many teen girls and women who did. Cycling was so popular in Portland and in other cities by the early 1900s that fashion designers had special clothes for the two-wheeled set. You’ve likely heard of bloomers (and I’ll take that up in a separate post). Here’s an ad for...

Did She Wear Lipstick?

Our fictional Miriam Josefsohn was 16 years old in 1912. Now, a hundred years later, most girls Miriam’s age in the U.S. wear lipstick—or not—and no one bats an eyelash. But back then it was a different story.

Levy Tube, circa 1915. Note the slide on the side.

First off, there was no such thing as “lipstick” in 1912. Women—and men in some eras—had been reddening their lips for thousands of years with home-brewed concoctions. Maurice Levy, of the Scovil Manufacturing Company in Waterbury, Connec...

1849 Gold Rush Yields Chocolate

Ghirardelli himself

After writing the previous blog post, I couldn’t stop thinking about chocolate—Ghirardelli’s chocolates, to be exact. Those chocolates all started with Domenico Ghirardelli (stands to reason), born in Rapallo, Italy, in 1817. Domenico’s papa imported exotic foods, and Domenico was an apprentice to a candy maker. Domenico later moved to Uruguay for a job in the South American chocolate trade. He changed his first name to Domingo and settled in Peru.

Then came the California G...