Batgrl (Book Data Kept Elsewhere) > Recent Status Updates

Gaposchkin, on being a woman: "It is a tale of low salary, lack of status, slow advancement. But I have reached a height that I should never, in my wildest dreams, have predicted 50 years ago. It has been a case of survival, not of the fittest, but the most doggedly persistent."

Gaposchkin, Cambridge vs Radcliffe, in the 1920s: "At Cambridge we had had rooms of our own. Permission had been required for leaving College after the evening meal. Lights had to be turned off at 11; in scholastic emergencies we were allowed to work later - by candlelight. Now I came and went as I pleased, could work at the Observatory all night if I so desired."

Gaposchkin, physics class at Cambridge: "I was the only woman student who attended them and the regulation required that women should sit by themselves in the front row. There had been a time when a chaperone was necessary but mercifully that day was past."

Gaposchkin: "The move to St. Paul's Girls' School seemed like a step from medieval to modern times. ...I was not only permitted, but actually encouraged, to study science. ...It was a time of dynamic happiness. I remember saying to myself: "I shall never be lonely again; now I can think about science" "

Gaposchkin: "At about this time it became evident that I was developing a growth of facial hair. I turned for help to the family doctor, only to be told that there was nothing to be done about it. "Never mind, Cecilia," he said kindly, "you've got brains. Make something of them." It was not much comfort, but it stiffened my resolve to become a scientist."

Gaposchkin: "Incredible as it may seem in the atomic age, the neglect of science teaching in a Church [of England] school in 1912 was a reflection of the nineteenth-century feeling that science is in conflict with religion..." - the ellipsis is in this excerpt, and now I'm wondering what more Gaposchkin wrote about this. Another book to add to the reading list.

Gaposchkin: "When I was 10 years old I was taken out to look at Halley's Comet, a most disappointing sight! It could not compare with the great "Daylight Comet" that had blazed its tail across the western sky earlier in the year, a truly awesome experience."

Cecilia Payne Gaposchkin: "For the first time I knew the leaping of the heart, the sudden enlightenment, that were to become my passion. I think my life as a scientist began at that moment. I must have been about eight years old. More than 70 years have passed since then, and the long garnering and sifting has been spurred by the hope of such another revelation. I have not hoped in vain."

Powdermaker, at government officials' dinners: "Everyone gave me advice, and I tried to conceal that I was falling asleep and not hearing all of it. I had started taking quinine daily and it had the usual first effect of causing sleepiness and partial deafness."

Powdermaker, on delays and waiting to get into the field: "Occasionally I had a horrible feeling that I might go on traveling forever, arriving places, meeting pleasant people, and shopping for equipment. ...a note cautioning me not to forget to type my notes in duplicate and to send the extra copies to him as often as possible, just in case anything happened to me."

Powdermaker: "Before beginning anthropology, I had experienced stepping in and out of my own society - in the family, in college, and in the labor movement. ...After visiting London, Oxford, and Cambridge, I decided to stay in London. Oxford and Cambridge were beautiful, but too secluded for me; London I loved at sight."

Hortense Powdermaker, at college: "I was surprised at not being invited to join a sorority and belatedly discovered that sororities were not open to Jews. I was not sure that I wished to join one, but I wanted to be invited."

M. M. Nice: Having grown up in Kansas it's kind of amazing to hear such fervent love of the birds, wildlife, flowers, etc. of Oklahoma, because I do not think of the plains as being that way. Which is totally due to spending my adolescence there and thinking of nothing but leaving. Now I think I was probably a bit unfair. ...But no, still not planning to visit OK any time soon. Heh.

M. M. Nice: on being a mom, yet wanting more, missing her science: "I was truly frustrated. I resented the implication that my husband and the children had brains, and I had none. He taught; they studied; I did housework." - which seems very modern. This is 1918.

M. M. Nice: after studying Bobwhites and writing a paper, she gets married and doesn't pursue the PhD program/thesis offered to her. Even though she stays in the area while her husband gets his PhD at same college. "My parents were more than happy to have me give up thoughts of a career and take up home-making, and in every way they helped us in this new venture."

M. M. Nice: "I believe that I was the only one of my class of 150 who graduated without a definite plan for earning her living, either at once or in the future. ...I was to return to Amherst to be a daughter-at-home as my parents wished..." - because unless you absolutely had to work, that's what girls did. Until they married.

Also enjoying reading about Nice going to my Alma mater, Mount Holyoke College (in western Massachusetts), with lines like: "After all, had not Mary Lyon established Wednesday as Recreation Day?"

M. M. Nice: parents didn't want daughters walking alone in the woods, so the girls had to have a brother with them. Same parents thought it a bad idea for Nice to have a gun with her on college-age solo hikes: "...my father objected as follows: 1 it is exceedingly dangerous; 2 it brings upon a young woman who is addicted to it the name of being eccentric." - this in the early 1900s. Nice bought herself a gun anyway.

Margaret Morse Nice, ornithologist at 13ish: "I arranged all my best nests on a shelf above my bed - the greatest prizes being a bunch of glued twigs of a Chimney Swift and a few straws laid by a Mourning Dove on top of an old Robin's nest. I gloated over my treasures, and every evening, for fear I might forget their identity, I recited their names..."

Mendenhall: "...I was cited as an able woman who had married and failed to use her expensive medical education. It always hurt, but now I know it was a damn lie, and I can claim honestly that I think I can give evidence of the use of medical knowledge much wider and deeper than that shown by the average physician, whether in practice or teaching." - which is why she wrote a section on what she did post marriage.

The writing at the ending of this is redeeming a lot of the clunkiness of the prose in the rest of it. This is still good plotting. In both senses of the word.

"The muscles holding his smile in place stood out like wales." But not Wales the country - it's this sort of wales: "the raised mark left on the skin after the stroke of a rod or whip."

"A pleasant smile illuminated his face, erasing its dull lumpishness." - that's Spade, the hero. That Hammett uses the word lumpish to describe. Yet another reason why I keep having trouble understanding why all the women are attracted to him. I don't think lumpish was ever attractive, even back in the 1930s.

Spade rushes off to the rescue - but first, while waiting for his hired car, he eats "chops, baked potato, and sliced tomatoes." Though of course he eats hurriedly. And then has a cigarette and coffee until his driver shows up, because he's being chauffeured. (I think you'll understand why this part wouldn't be in a film, right?)

"He took his hand from his chin and rubbed her cheek. "You're a damned good man, sister," he said and went out." - Sam Spade complimenting his secretary.

"A lathy youth with salient ears ushered Spade into the District Attorney's office." - it's as if the writer looked up the word prominent and thought the word salient would sound so much better. It might, but doesn't really work visually. You don't know if the ears are huge or protruding or just weirdly shaped. Lathy is at least a clearer description.

"There's nothing to be said about the bird in Lady Francis Verney's Memoirs of the Verney Family during the Seventeenth Century , to be sure. I looked." - this is an example of the kind of text reference that immediately sends me off to google and then hrs later I suddenly think "wait, wasn't I reading a book an hour ago?!"

I can understand why Hammett is known for plots but the writing is, er: "Sauntering, he crossed the lobby to the divan from which the elevators could be seen and sat down beside - not more than a foot from - the young man who was apparently reading a newspaper."

"His eyes burned yellowly." - WAY too much going on with eyes and colors burning and glaring and such. Making note to reread later just to see how many eye references there are. We'll see if I remember...

Spade: "You don't have to trust me, anyhow, as long as you can persuade me to trust you."