Batgrl (Book Data Kept Elsewhere) > Recent Status Updates

"I haven't lived a good life," she cried. "I've been bad - worse than you could know - but I'm not all bad. Look at me, Mr. Spade. You know I'm not all bad, don't you? You can see that, can't you? Then can't you trust me a little? ..." - Lady, no one would believe this act. Seriously.

"We believed your two hundred dollars."
"You mean - ?" She seemed to not know what he meant.
"I mean that you paid us more than if you'd been telling the truth," he explained blandly, "and enough more to make it all right."

Effie Perine, the secretary on Miles' wife Iva: "You know I think she's a louse, but I'd be a louse too if it would give me a body like hers." - still not getting why these women find Spade physically attractive. Hammett's physical descriptions of him make him seem weird looking. Am thinking Hammet just writes odd descriptions.

I'm behind in listening to all my podcasts, so I'm only just now listening to BBC World Book Club's episode on Pride and Prejudice, which you should check out if you're fond of Austen: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p012nt8f - a really great conversation on the book.

It's one thing to read about pregnancy stories in an autobiography - and entirely another thing when that pregnant woman is also a doctor. Mendenhall notes her depression and difficulty after her first child died during birth (text: "after a botched delivery"). 2nd child: labor lasted 4 days, on the 5th day doctor was finally able to induce. Only 2 of her eventual 4 children survived infancy.

Now I wish there were a biography out there about Mendenhall's fellow student, Florence Sabin. All her publications are in medical journals. Read that wikipedia link - she sounds amazing.

Mendenhall: Florence [Sabin] starved 10 years as a Fellow, was finally promoted to Assistant Professor - as good a teacher and as distinguished an anatomist as the country afforded, but, on Dr. Mall's sudden death, a man was promoted over her to fill the chair who was her inferior in age, experience, brains, and ability to succeed. ...One has to accept that women were blocked..." She notes that's still the case.

Mendenhall, part of long story on her treatment as intern: "He said that of course he thought - and all my classmates and the medical staff would think the same thing - that only my desire to satisfy sexual curiosity would allow me or any woman to take charge of a male ward." He then goes on to say delightful things about "negroes," such patients being a threat to women, etc. He = the Superintendent of Johns Hopkins.

Mendenhall: "That night I must have read my Marcus Aurelius, which I had acquired some years before, and which I have read as a daily help for 50 years, using the 12 chapters for the different months of the year, and finding unfailing guidance from the wise words written by the great Roman Emperor nearly 1,900 years ago."

Mendenhall, at about 14: "Years after, Miss Gunning [her teacher] told me that she was in despair this spring of being able to handle me. She had never attempted to guide an utterly untrained mind, and though she said no word of criticism, I realized even then that she had not only had a hard job to do, but had to do it without any help from the family, and even against mother's thoughtless opposition."

Mendenhall: "These years of my mother's dependance on me, and the responsibility of the Furbish children [Mendenhall's deceased sister's children], and the sorrow of my sister's unhappy life and tragic last illness, forged my character into iron. ...It made a woman of me in my teens - sent me into a profession... For years I would wake up in the night - afraid of poverty."

If you think the women's issue of juggling career vs family is a recent thing - Dorothy Reed Mendenhall struggled with this - in 1906 and on. Not that wikipedia fills you in on much post marriage - she went on to become medical officer of US Children's Bureau, worked with war orphans, authored a book/study on midwifery, etc.

Dorothy Reed Mendenhall: "The passing of the front hall, and the loss of beauty of stairways, landings, and railings have followed the trend to cities, to apartment life, and to economy of space. Family life was less dependent on halls than on fireplaces or porches for welding the lives of individual members together..."

S. Josephine Baker,on suffrage: "...I did not start out as a feminist at all. ...But it was impossible to resist the psychological suction which gradually drew you into active participation in the great struggle to get political recognition of the fact that women are as much human beings as men are. Fundamentally that was what we were all after."

S. Josephine Baker, work in Hell's Kitchen: "My job was to start in this district every morning at seven o'clock, work until eleven, then return for two hours more from four to six. I climbed stair after stair, knocked on door after door, met drunk after drunk, filthy mother after filthy mother and dying baby after dying baby. ...with an average of 1500 babies dying each week in the city" - summer, around year 1900

S. Josephine Baker, drunk keeping her from a patient: "But then, as he lurched after me, he crossed the stairhead and, with instinctive reaction, I doubled my fist and hit him. It was beautifully timed. I weighed hardly half as much as he, but he was practically incapable of standing up and this frantic tap was strategically placed." He falls down the stairs, she thinks he's killed him - no idea the end of that bit.

S. Josephine Baker, studying to get into med program: "During this whole year I was encouraged and stimulated by a running fire of sarcasm from my numerous relatives - all, that is, except my mother, who stood by me without a word once her mind had been made up." Baker's school was an investment; going into medicine to eventually work to provide money for her mother, widowed without income.

S. Josephine Baker, on going into medicine: "And both sides of the family were aghast at the idea of my spending so much money in such an unconventional way. It was an unheard of, a harebrained and unwomanly scheme."

Written in 1943: "From his secret place he is working for all America now. We are all his kinfolks. Just be sure our cause is right, and then you can lean back and say, "John de Conquer would know what to do in a case like this, and then he would finish it off with a laugh." White America, take a laugh out of our black mouths and win! We give you High John de Conquer!"

"He who carries his heart in his sword must perish. So says the ultimate law. High John de Conquer knew a lot of things like that. He who wins from within is in the "Be" class. Be here when the ruthless man comes, and be here when he is gone."

"They say of that type of preacher, :Why he don't preach at all. He just lectures." And the way they say "lecture" makes it sounds like horse-stealing."

The Ocoee Riot - one of three Florida race riots of the 1920s: "White mobs committed murders, accompanied by wholesale destruction of black houses, churches and schools." In Hurston's account, at Ocoee there was an attempt (and apparent success) to suppress the black vote.

"West Hell is the hottest and toughest part of that warm territory. The most desperate malefactors are the only ones condemned to West Hell... These souls are changed to rubber coffins so that they go bouncing through Regular Hell and on to their destination without having to be carried by attendants as the Devil does not like to send his imps into West Hell oftener than is absolutely necessary."

"Folklore is the arts of the people before they find out that there is any such thing as art, and they make it out of whatever they find at hand."

"Folklore is the boiled-down juice of human living. It does not belong to any special time, place, nor people. No country is so primitive that it has no lore, and no country has yet become so civilized that no folklore is being made within its boundaries."

Annoyance is when you have a set amount of time to read a library ebook (before it goes poof) and you take a reading break, but then discover a book review that inspires a reread and a purchase and then another impulse purchase - but you can NOT touch any of them yet because you MUST go back and finish your previous reading! Somehow I keep doing this to myself. Is there a word for this "can not read this book YET"?!

"There is a lively rivalry in the technical artistry of all of these fields. It is a special honor to be called upon to pray over the covered communion table, for the greatest prayer-artist present is chosen by the pastor for this, a lively something spreads over the church as he kneels, and the "bearing up" hum precedes him."

Spirituals: "The jagged harmony is what makes it, and it ceases to be what it was when this is absent. Neither can any group be trained to reproduce it. The truth dies under training like flowers under hot water. The harmony of the true spiritual is not regular. ...The congregation is bound by no rules. No two times singing is alike, so that we must consider the rendition of a song not as a final thing..."

"The idea that the whole body of spirituals are "sorrow songs" is ridiculous. They cover a wide range of subjects from a peeve at gossipers to Death and Judgement." - that's Hurston, always right up front with her opinions. (Then she goes on to cite examples, because she's good at that too.)