Ruth Tenzer Feldman's Blog, page 18

Oakland to San Francisco, 1912

Blue Thread ends with our gal Miriam on a southbound train to Oakland, California. Miriam’s friend, Florrie, lives near there and goes to school in Berkeley. Florrie writes:

You would love Berkeley as much as I do. We’re just a ferry ride away from San Francisco across the bay. Imagine being so close to the home of Ghirardelli chocolates!

A ferry ride? What about the bridge?

Let’s look at the map. Here’s what the San Francisco Bay area looks like now. You see two bridges: a longer one taking Rou...

The Proclamation!

Duniway (seated), Gov. West, and Viola Coe

One hundred years ago today, Oregon Governor Oswald West issued the proclamation giving women the right to vote. Abigail Scott Duniway had the well deserved honor of drafting the document, which you see here, both transcribed courtesy of Oregon State Archives and in her handwriting.

Proclamation State of Oregon–Executive Department, Salem, Oregon, November 30, 1912

Whereas: The women of Oregon, after long and patient effort, have persuaded the men of th...

November 26, 1912, in Bow and Bromley

British suffrage poster, 1909

On November 26, 1912, suffragists in Oregon were still celebrating women’s right to vote. Abigail Scott Duniway was drafting the proclamation suffrage proclamation that Governor Oswald West would officially sign on November 30. But November 26 was a disappointment to the women of Bow and Bromley.

Both Bow and Bromley were relatively small voting districts in London, England. Combined they elected one member to the British House of Commons (roughly equivalent to a C...

Wild West Turkey

Blue Thread ends during the first part of November, 1912. Had the story gone through Thanksgiving, the Josefsohn family might have dined on goose instead of turkey. Here’s why. According to the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife,

Wild turkeys are not native to Oregon but were first successfully introduced in 1961. Since then more than 10,000 turkeys have been transplanted to locations all over Oregon.

Merriam's Turkey

Two turkey subspecies have been introduced to Oregon. The Merriam’s wild t...

A Twelve-Course Meal from 1899

Thinking about Thanksgiving dinner? Visit the Just for Fun Page to see recipes from at least one hundred years ago. Here’s the proper order for a twelve-course dinner from The Century Cook Book, written by Mary Ronald and published in 1899. Does anyone still have such dinners?

This cookbook is one of at least 40,000 items in the Project Gutenberg collection. In 1971, Michael S. Hart started this project to digitize books that have gone out of copyright, in order to preserve them in eBook form...

Maud Malone Heckles 100 Years Ago

The woman suffrage campaign in Blue Thread plays out against the broader backdrop of the presidential campaign nationally. Unlike the 2012 campaign between two major candidates—Barack Obama and Mitt Romney—the 1912 had three major candidates. Democrat Woodrow Wilson (then governor of New Jersey) and Progressive Theodore Roosevelt (TR) challenged Republican president William Howard Taft. Some activists in the woman suffrage campaign made their views heard. Maud Malone (shown here standing) was...

Happy Birthday, Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Here’s a blog post from Suffrage Wagon that I can’t resist sending along to you, in honor of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, born November 12, 1815. She died before the suffrage campaign in Blue Thread, but she would have been pleased with the results. Happy birthday, Elizabeth.

Blue Thread’s Blue Thread

Taking a break from elections and suffrage, I thought you’d like to read this guest blog from Michael Feldman, who lives with me and my fictional people. Thanks, Mike!

One of the key characters in Blue Thread is inanimate: a strand of blue thread. Why blue thread?

The blue thread is part of an old tallit (pronounced ta-LEET in modern Hebrew), or prayer shawl, a family heirloom which Miriam Josefsohn receives from Uncle Hermann. What is this shawl all about?

In the Bible’s Book of Numbers 15:38,...

Thanks to Oregon Men, Today’s the Day!

Decades after the first attempt to give Oregon women the right to vote, the issue once again appeared on the ballot on November 5, 1912. The majority of men who voted in the precinct of Miriam’s family in Blue Thread voted against suffrage for women. But statewide 61,265 men didn’t share Julius Josefsohn’s opinion of women. Here’s the official tally. Yes!

Happy Halloween–1912 Style

Fans of Blue Thread will likely remember that Miriam practiced on her father’s printing press on the pretext of making Halloween cards for her younger cousin Albert.

Uncle Hermann, I’ll wager Albert would like his very own Halloween cards printed here in the shop. Um… Kirsten and I can make them if there’s slack time today…or Thursday. I think it’s a swell idea, don’t you?”

Uncle Hermann rubbed his chin. “Now that you mention it, yes, I think he’d like that.”

Kirsten wasn’t keen on the idea unti...