Per commentor Dave C:
I work from home. Josephine helps!
***********
Because I can: In the NYTImes, Elizabeth Word Gutting, “What My Mother Sees in Hillary”:
IN 1973, my mother’s first husband was killed in a car crash in downtown St. Louis. My brother, Jason, was nine months old. In swift succession, my mother lost the following things: the father of her first child; access to a credit card; her car insurance; and the ability to take out a loan. The first was terrible luck. The other things were taken from her because she was a single woman — with a son, to boot — it was the 1970s, and, as she put it, “you were not considered legitimate at that time unless you had a man in your life.”
Four decades later, my mom is looking forward to having the chance to vote, she hopes, for this country’s first female president. She and Hillary Clinton are a year apart in age. Though my mom’s experiences are so different from my own, they serve as a constant reminder to me of the work it’s taken for Mrs. Clinton to get where she is today, and the force of society’s attitudes about women, and their value, that she has been pushing against…
At a town hall a few months ago, a young man asked Mrs. Clinton why young people lacked enthusiasm for her.
She sounded a bit wounded, but she tried to explain what she’d been up against for so many years. Despite all the criticisms, she said, over the course of several decades in the public eye, all she could do was continue to stand her ground…
In the years when my mom was a single mother, people commented on her lifestyle with alarming frequency. Why wasn’t she living with her parents, they wanted to know. Wasn’t she worried that if she didn’t marry again soon, her son would grow up to be gay? Her landlord came over after her husband died, hemming and hawing, saying how sorry she was, but also that she was hoping my mom might move out to be closer to family, which would probably be better for everyone.
Well. My mother persevered. She smiled politely and bit her tongue and did what she had to do to survive those rough years…
Betty Cracker
Like Dave C, I also work from home, and my dogs are exceptionally pleasant coworkers. Well, most of the time. I have had to clean up their puke a time or two, something I wasn’t required to do for office mates in my corporate past…
Thanks for posting the NYT piece, which I had missed. My late mom, like the writer’s mother, was also around the same age as Hillary Clinton, faced many struggles as a single mother (via divorce, in her case) and was a Clinton supporter in 2008 who eventually voted for President Obama twice. She would be a proud Clinton supporter now if she were still with us, and of course I thought of her when I voted for Clinton in the primary, and she’ll be in my thoughts when I’m engaged in GOTV efforts later this year.
sm*t cl*de
@Betty Cracker:
The worst part is the unrelenting sexual harassment.
Josephine is admirable.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Betty Cracker:
Obviously, you didn’t work around lawyers in your corporate past.
BillinGlendaleCA
…And now for the Good News: The kid called her mom last evening and said she had done better than she thought she would on the exam(one that she had to pass to get her degree) she had earlier that day and she would be receiving her BSN Magna Cume Laude.
Betty Cracker
@BillinGlendaleCA: That’s excellent news! When does she take the boards?
BillinGlendaleCA
@Betty Cracker: I’m not sure, I’ll ask her on Sunday(she’s having dinner with us and a friend of ours). Her mom’s paying for a prep course for her boards as a graduation present.
Randy P
I have always liked Hillary, especially that warm, very genuine laugh in the face of absolutely crazy insane hatred, which I first noticed in interviews during Bill’s administration. She is genuinely able to laugh in their faces and I love her for it.
I had the chance to see her in person in 2008 in some kind of local PA Democratic Party event which I can’t recall. Small room, very personal. And again the warmth and humor came shining through.
I’m confident a sufficient number of Americans will see that and believe their own eyes over the lazy reporters who repeat the “cold and calculating” meme rather than actually report reality. And the lazy blog commenters who do the same.
Yeah, I’m a fanboy. Though I voted Obama in 2008. I think she was an awesome Secretary of State and she’s going to be an awesome President.
rikyrah
Good Morning ?,Everyone ?
rikyrah
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Wow?
Congratulations to her?
qwerty42
@rikyrah: Good Morning, Rikyrah.
Schlemazel Khan
@BillinGlendaleCA:
VERY NICE! Congratulations to her,
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA: Woohoo!!!
Mustang Bobby
Good morning, Rikyrah and Friends.
BillinGlendaleCA
Thanks, all.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
NotMax
Ouch.
Germy Shoemangler
Heigh ho, it’s off to work we go
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKAFZvRiKyg
interpreted by Tom Waits
Germy Shoemangler
@Randy P:
Not just lazy reporters. Lazy comedians repeat that meme as well. Last week’s SNL cold open had “HRC” delivering lines like “I hate people. I just want to be president.”
The Thin Black Duke
@Germy Shoemangler: Thanks for reminding me why I don’t watch SNL anymore.
Baud
@Randy P:
@Germy Shoemangler:
She’ll need a lot of validators to speak on her behalf about her personality to counter the media spin.
satby
@BillinGlendaleCA: Good for your daughter, congratulations!
I was 18 in 1973, and the employment fields that I was encouraged to go into after high school were teaching or nursing, so that I could always “go back after the children were grown”. Children that didn’t exist yet because I wasn’t even planning on marriage yet. Standard advice given to girls my age. College was seen as unnecessary for women, though it was a path to a better marriage and women were expected to get their MRS awarded, not a BA.
My kids, in their 30s, really don’t have a clue how it was.
satby
@Davebo up top: Josephine is a beauty!
Good morning rikyrah et al.
Germy Shoemangler
I’ve only known one person who worked from home. She did customer service work; took calls at her home.
I’ve always been fascinated with the idea of working from home, but I have no idea what sort of jobs it entails. I’m familiar with all the “work from home!” scams, which makes me wary.
I’ve read about people who invested $$ to learn to be transcriptionists; bought foot pedals for their computers, and then couldn’t find work.
What the heck do people do when they work from home? I’m curious.
Germy Shoemangler
@satby: I remember job hunting in the ’70s and seeing the newspaper help wanted pages divided into “Help Wanted Men” “Help Wanted Women” sections.
Patricia Kayden
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: President Obama has been an excellent ambassador for this country. Very proud to be represented by him abroad.
@BillinGlendaleCA: Congrats to your daughter!
gene108
@Baud:
Probably not enough to counter the 24 years of “cold bitch” “shrill harpie” and “Lady Macbeth” the media has been hammering her with.
I was gobsmacked, in 1992, when I was 18 and the hostility she got for being a working mother and not just give up her life and career to be a political prop for her husband.
People too young to really remember the 1990’s seem among those most married to the worst stereotypes of Hillary (and Bill).
RedDirtGirl
Good morning, gang.
BillinGlendaleCA
@satby: I’m 5 years younger than you, but things were the same then as well(though I think changing quickly). This is her second try at college, the first wasn’t all that successful. She did 6 1/2 years in the Air Force, that and age helped focus her more this time.
@Patricia Kayden: Thanks much.
Germy Shoemangler
@gene108: What I find most unbelievable is the amount of shit she’s taken for keeping her marriage and her family together.
Baud
@gene108:
We can’t stop the hate. Just stem the tide.
For these young people, hate is an abstraction. Society has told them it’s ok to make stuff up about the Clintons and get your rage on. So they do. It helps that Clinton is competing against someone they like.
Baud
@RedDirtGirl: rikyrah has started a trend!
Eunicecycle
@satby: Satby, you and I are almost exactly the same age, a little younger than Hillary, and we know what we went through to get where she is. I tell young women my “war stories” and they look at me like I have 2 heads, probably boring them to death at the same time. Things have improved tremendously for our daughters, but I make sure my two don’t take it for granted.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@satby:
My first wife took a career aptitude test in the ’70s and was told she was suited to be a nurse, a teacher or a nun. She’s an artist now.
My test at the same time said I should be a mechanic. I’m a service engineer and an electronics tech so that wasn’t far off. But they would never have given ‘mechanic’ to a girl.
sherparick
I have not seen a posting on the State Department’s IG report on Secretary Clinton’s use of her personal e-mail account for official business at State. First, it does point out why “convenience” was probably the motive for Clinton’s preference to use personal e-mail for official business. http://www.vox.com/2016/5/25/11771850/hillary-clinton-emails-inspector-general-report. But also a desire “to keep the personal” from Government records and disclosure through FOIA. Second, and probably more important, Hilary apparently is surrounded by a group of loyal supporters who apparently see their role as “to support the Secretary,” getting her what she wants, and not asking hard questions about rules and consequences for breaking those rules. In doing so they did not serve her or the country well. So this stupid thing has blown up on her and the country. If the same mind set and group think is brought to the White House, it will blow up her administration at some point. She will be the nominee and I will support her and vote for her, but boy do I worry.
Baud
GMA is all in for Trump.
Patricia Kayden
@Germy Shoemangler: To the point that somehow she is responsible for her husband’s philandering ways. She forgave him and stayed with him. How is that necessarily a bad thing, even if it’s not something every woman would do?
Certainly Trump has zero rocks to throw at Secretary Clinton’s glass house in terms of philandering and multiple marriages — especially not with the sexism which has been on display for decades and has featured heavily in his campaign.
Baud
@sherparick:
I don’t worry at all, FWIW.
Comrade Mary
@Germy Shoemangler: I’m a freelance web developer / tech writer / etc. I started working at home in 2002 after a big client who hired me on contract ran out of desk space at the office. I’ve worked briefly on site for a couple of other clients since, but otherwise, I have a 5 second commute every morning.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Germy Shoemangler: And most of that shit is from the “Family Values Party™”.
debbie
@Germy Shoemangler:
I freelanced graphic design, editing, and writing for local nonprofits for 15 years from my apartment. Loved it, especially the commute and independence. Not possible anymore (thanks, Wall Street). I never had motivation issues and I met every single deadline that came my way. I can’t recommend working from home enough.
rk
A lot of young women forget that it’s only been a generation or so that women have had freedom of any kind and that too only in a few countries. All the women that came before my generation had no choices of any kind. My grandmother was illiterate, got married at 15 to 40 year old man, had a dozen children, became a widow at 42 and spent the remainder of her life dependent on her other men. My aunts all got married young and my uncle was the only one who had a professional education because he was the male child. My mom hated her life of homemaker and her only advice to me was to tell me to be educated and have a professional career. I knew that she wanted to be an engineer like my uncle, but spent her entire life in “the kitchen” (her words). Women literally had no choices other than marriage and kids. God forbid if marriage did not happen, or if there were no children (because the woman was always blamed for the lack of children). Any illness in a woman was because of “hysteria”. Even autism was blamed on the lack of motherly love.
Trump is pretty much the same generation as Hillary. Hillary had to be incredibly tough to get where she is today and she must have had to deal with thousands of mini Trumps. I don’t know of any woman of Hillary’s generation who would have got away with even a fraction of the behavior Trump shows. Trump is and has been a baby child all his life and society has rewarded him for his bad behavior. A female version of Donald Trump as presidential candidate would have been destroyed long ago.
Patricia Kayden
House Democrats score a victory for LGBT rights.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/05/26/paul-ryan-is-in-another-fight-he-doesnt-want-this-time-over-lgbt-rights/?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_pp-lgbt-630a-top%3Ahomepage%2Fstory
Amir Khalid
@sherparick:
I found this take in the Daily Kos on it.
Baud
@Amir Khalid: Definitely the polar opposite of how GMA was reporting it this morning. My favorite line:
“Secretary Clinton says her email server was never hacked, but the IG report shows that there were several attempted hacks.”
Your liberal media.
Ultraviolet Thunder
I found that one downside of being self employed and working at home is that I never left work behind. I’d work a lot more hours and always feel like I should be doing more. My wife was a self employed CAD designer, working in a home office. She poured far more hours into her work than she was paid for.
Now I’m a field engineer, which is complicated to explain. But when I leave a customer for the hotel, my work day is over and my time is my own.
debbie
@Baud:
I worked from home yesterday and listened to Glenn Beck. He’s still hating on Trump. He wants all true conservatives (or what he defines as true) to come together and formulate a 100-year plan to take the country back (any timeframe less will not be enough). He had some guy named Brad Thor on, who sees Trump as an “extinction-level” event for both democracy and capitalism.
This is the only link that’s not connected to Beck. Unfortunately, they were too rushed to get the guy’s name right.
I had a doctor’s appointment so I missed the assassination references, but the rest of it was pretty amusing.
Thoughtful David
I’m a white male a bit younger than Secty. Clinton, and very privileged, and I know it. But somehow, I got an empathy gene, and can understand what women and others have suffered. I will be very proud to have Secty. Clinton as our next President.
Trump delenda est.
Joel
@Germy Shoemangler: SNL is going to play to people’s expectations. Regardless of what viewpoints their cast might have individually. Lorne Michaels has said as much.
bystander
@Germy Shoemangler: See, this is where Trump has it all over Crooked Hillary. He’s a real businessman. Unlike Clinton, Trump knows when to cut his losses and declare bankruptcy as he did with his first two families. Too early to say how long Number Three will last, but Clinton has a lot to do to catch up.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: I’ve said before, the reporters need to talk to their IT folk to understand a bit of the tech. I know the IT folk have strange tats and piercings and may smell a bit funny; but they might actually help the reporters get the fucking story right.
Baud
@debbie:
Do you need an intervention?
I hope be keeps it up. I’ll take any help we can get.
Iowa Old Lady
@BillinGlendaleCA: Nothing like being a grown up to make you a better college student. I always liked teaching returning students.
I’m beginning to think I’ll never be able to read at GOS again. The commenters are in the middle of a breakdown.
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA: Suggests a motive not in evidence.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Ultraviolet Thunder: Huh. I took a carer aptitude test in fourth grade in the 70s and was told civil or chemical engineer.
By a wide, wide margin. My “suitability” for various professions were scatterplotted, and everything else was clustered together with those two sitting off to themselves. Computer programmer wasn’t on the radar then, but it would have probably joined them.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
This guy was brought in to build GOTV systems from scratch in swing states. Now that’s all gone. Another failed enterprise like Trump steaks, Trump vitamins, Trump water, Trump mortgage, Trump tacos.
Thoughtful David
@Germy Shoemangler:
A lot of information-age jobs require only a phone, good internet connection, and a computer. Almost everything I do is done via phone, Skype, or email, or writing on my computer (proposals, reports, contracts, all project management). I work with people all over the world, although mostly in the western hemisphere, and very few of them would even have a clue where I am or what kind of office or whether I’m at home in my PJs. It is nice to meet in person sometimes, but a lot of people I work with I see only on the order of once every 5 years, and some I’ve never met in person.
I do work out of an office most days, but my wife, who does similar things, works from home probably 9 out of 10 days.
debbie
@Baud:
It’s good practice for: What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Baud: I found the breathless reporting over the attempted hacks hysterically funny.
Every server connected to the internet has had attempted hacks. Get back to me when you can prove it wasn’t someone probing to see if the server was running WordPress.
Germy
rawstory headline:
rikyrah
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
I think that the rest of the world sees that our President respects them, and they respond in kind.
LAO
@rk: I graduated high school in 1987 and during middle school was required to take a typing class on actual typewriters. Even though I was a straight A student, I was failing this class. The teacher, first name Guido, pulled me a sided and admonished me for my attitude. He finished his lecture by telling me that I’d better pay attention because how would I get a job as a secretary, if I couldn’t type.
This was the 1980s. When I told my mom, she was none to pleased. Of course, she was in her final year of law school at the time, so she was itching for a fight.
I’m grateful for Hillary Clinton and proudly support her.
rikyrah
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
He is going to do it on the cheap. Farming it out to subcontractors -the SuperPACs
Baud
@LAO: And now you’re an attorney and never have type at all!
Thoughtful David
@Thoughtful David:
Oh, and I forgot to add:
Trump delenda est.
LAO
@Baud: lol. Can’t afford a legal secretary, they make more money than me. Wait a minute…
Baud
@LAO: You could get a monkey to type your pleadings and still be considered great by Bundy standards.
LAO
@Baud: Judge Navarro denied Cliven Bundy’s motion to disqualify her on Tuesday. Lol. She briefly questioned Hansen’s fitness to continue as counsel.
LAO
Ammon Bundy fired Mike Arnold and hired a new lawyer. http://www.oregonlive.com/oregon-standoff/2016/05/ammon_bundy_retains_new_lawyer.html#incart_river_home
satby
@satby: sorry, I meant Dave C!
Mary
@Germy Shoemangler: I work from home, and it is amazing. I’m an attorney working for a small organization headquartered in Pittsburgh. Because of the nature of the work, we need a presence in DC, but it’s simply not cost effective to pay the overhead for office space for the three of us here on the DC team, so we all get to work from home.
No commute means an extra hour+ every day. Not being in an office means that any down is “me time” that I can use to either be productive in my personal life (cleaning house, running errands, etc), or super lazy (take a nap, play outside with the dogs). My sister lives nearby, so often when her kids are off from school I’ll work at her house so she can still go to the office. And despite taking a significant pay cut from my old job, I’m doing better financially because I’m saving tons of money that I was previously spending on commuting, eating lunch out, and buying office clothes (also, the old job was super miserable, so I did a lot of expensive retail therapy).
That being said, I don’t think I would like it as much if I were single and living alone. I would probably get lonely and drive myself bonkers.
Ultraviolet Thunder
Is Bundy really claiming, as I have heard, that his 2nd amendment rights are being violated if he’s deprived of firearms in jail?
That’s almost more than I can believe.
satby
@Germy Shoemangler: I worked from home when I wasn’t traveling and I was in IT middle management. I managed the teams that either fixed technology problems or procured new equipment, depending on what account I was assigned to.
Matt
All she could do was stand there silently as the Goldman Sachs’ execs stuffed $675k into her pockets for a couple speeches. She had to be mute while she sent Bill out to repeat tired old racist bullshit about “SUPAPREDATAHS”. Couldn’t do anything but push the “YES” button to authorize the Iraq war. Poor ol’ Hillary…
LAO
@Ultraviolet Thunder: Yes. Ryan Bundy. I linked to it yesterday and quoted from it. He’s representing himself. I can’t imagine any attorney signing off on that claim. (Excluding Joel Hansen and Larry Klayman, of course).
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
Oops. I almost forgot
Couple of guys stripped at a Hillary rally to her and Jamie Lee Curtis’s delight
(strippers #1)
(strippers #2)
amk
@Matt: Come nov, win or lose, her life will go on, probably much better. After another 6 months of blind hatred, what about yours?
gogol's wife
I linked that op-ed in the comments when it appeared, but nobody bit. I couldn’t believe it appeared in the NYTimes. Somebody must have been asleep at the wheel when they let it into the Sunday Review.
But the letters yesterday were great, attacking Brooks. I couldn’t read his column, but from the letters I gather that he argued Hillary isn’t likable because she has no hobbies, like male candidates.
The Thin Black Duke
@Matt: So I guess you’re voting for Trump? By the way, don’t you clowns have new material?
Patricia Kayden
@sherparick: You’re worried that Secretary Clinton used the wrong email server when we are facing a possible Megalomaniac who has already promised to go after religious and racial minorities should he be elected? Really? I’m not. Next.
D58826
@Germy Shoemangler: I backed into my WFH at the bank. As a programmer I do the same things at home that I would do at the office. Only thing I can’t do woprking from home is get caught in traffic. The one other thing I do working from home is work longer hours than I probably would if I was downtown in cube land.
Aside from the traffic part, it does let you customize your time a since no one one is walking by and checking your cube. As long as you meet your deadlines and are available during most of the core business hours no one notices if you take a 3 hour lunch and then make it up in the evening.
The downside of course is over the cubical wall/water cooler socializing
Patricia Kayden
@Matt: You may have forgotten, but just as a reminder the Congressional Black Caucus supported President Clinton’s stance on fighting crime. To try to go back and paint President Clinton as racist or anti-Black is laughable to say the least. The 1990s were an awful time in many inner cities and while the crime bill passed back then should be criticized, President Clinton wasn’t racist for signing it.
Patricia Kayden
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: White Supremacists will probably do just as good a job in getting out the vote for Donald. After all, they know his supporters better than anyone else.
D58826
@sherparick:
She is of course the first politician to surround her self with loyal supporters who try and protect the boss. That is one more first that she can add to her record. Along with building a stable for all of the pink unicorns that will be playing on the White House lawn.
D58826
@Patricia Kayden: as did Congressman Bernie Sanders.
MomSense
Dave C and Josephine are very handsome work mates.
PurpleGirl
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Patricia Kayden:
St. Bernard signed the crime bill and touted it as part of his tough on crime position on his website for his 2006 reelection, which has since been scrubbed. Because he’s a fraud.
If Hillary got caught stuffing money into her pockets for boiling live puppies and eating them live on TV, I’d still crawl over glass to vote for her against Trump.
Thoughtful David
This story from Politico (I will provide no link to anything in Politico):
“A Trump campaign plan to target Hillary Clinton over the decades-old Whitewater real estate scandal was made public on Wednesday afternoon when a Trump spokeswoman [Hope Hicks] accidentally included a Politico reporter on the email thread.”
So, one of the selling points for Tr**p is that he’s “going to hire the best people….” So when is he going to start?
I actually think this would be a good line of attack against him: “He says he’s going to hire the best people and yet he hired this or that fuckup.” (It could be put in better language.) Then provide examples, such as Ms. Hicks. First, this is going after one of his perceived (by lunatics) strengths. Second, it would probably enrage him, and he would start saying things like “blood coming out her wherever” that would turn off a lot of people. An enraged Tr**p is always good for us.
Oh, and:
Trump delenda est.
MomSense
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Congratulations!
@rikyrah:
Good morning!
Betty Cracker
@sherparick: Can’t speak for anyone else, but I read the report and found absolutely nothing I didn’t already know, so I didn’t think it was worth posting about. Clinton already said she wanted to use a single device for convenience and admitted it was a dumb idea in retrospect, so no story there. And of course she wanted to keep her personal emails private, as would anyone — particularly someone who’d been besieged by ideological zealots bent on her personal destruction for 25 years. She’s surrounded by loyalists, you say? Well, glory be! Show me a VIP who isn’t, and I’ll do a post on that.
Clinton isn’t a perfect candidate. We know this. But I don’t think the email thing really tells us anything other than that the US government seriously needs to up its IT game and that institutional support processes can be fucked up and subject to political wrangling, which isn’t exactly breaking news.
Tom
@Germy Shoemangler: I do course and curriculum design as well as teach online courses.
My main motivation was to be able to spend more time taking care of my disabled wife. (The first year we spent $25K on caregivers.) Because of this I needed something flexible (so I’m available for doctor appointments and such) so I could work on my own schedule.
Not all remote work gives you that luxury. It took me a while to find this gig and while it’s interesting and seems to be something I’m good at, it definitely takes a different mind-set to switch to working this way.
Randy P
@LAO: A programmer (female) I knew in the 80s surprised me when she told me she never learned to type. I think of it as a basic skill for computer usage. But she explained to me that if she had typing skills, the rest of her resume would be ignored and she’d be forced into secretarial jobs.
I fear she was right.
WereBear
@BillinGlendaleCA: Fantastic news! Way to represent :)
Which is a great thing, but can distort their view of what is in front of them, trying to explain :)
Tom
@Ultraviolet Thunder: Exactly. You never feel a clean disconnect from your work.
On the other hand, as a knowledge worker, my office is technically between my ears so I’m always there. One of the things I like is it’s giving me an opportunity to learn new skills and try out new technologies. This feeds back into my course development and teaching so I can bring real world tools into the classroom.
rikyrah
@Patricia Kayden:
And, I believe those attacks on her will fail. Because, too many women, who don’t live in the spotlight, have gone through the same process and come out to the same conclusion and did the same thing as Hillary.
rikyrah
@rk:
not just of Hillary’s generation.
I don’t know any women – period.
and, I certainly don’t know any non-White folks of any generation.
Tom
@Mary: The isolation of remote work is definitely an issue. Fortunately I’m married so I can always step out and spend time with my wife. While I’m working, our two cats wander into my home office from time to time to see how I’m doing (i.e. sit down between me and the keyboard and give me a good long stare or use my leg as a scratching post).
It’s kind of amusing when I have my weekly live classroom (via Webex) and one of them wanders in front of the web cam. I usually introduce them to my students. As you do.
satby
@Randy P: I never learned to touch type either, for the same reason. Not only was I pretty successful in IT, working my way up from desktop tech to management, but I often typed faster than my co-workers during chats because I didn’t have to backspace all the mistakes and retype words.
Back in the days before autocorrect made morons of us all.
D58826
@Amir Khalid: It was on my iphone twitter link last night and can’t find it today but there was an article in Baron’s that said of the 83 page report, half were appendices, most of the rest was a review of the rules. Only 7-8 pages dealt with the actual use of private e-mail accounts by various sec. of state. Powell used his private account the whole time he was S-O-S and deleted all of his e-mails when he left office. That if Hillary is called to testify before Congress then maybe Colin should be also. And basically it is the usual double standard – it only illegal/scandal if a Clinton does it.
PurpleGirl
@satby: Circa 1972: I hung out with a bunch of bio-pre-med majors. I listened to A LOT of angst and fears during their senior year as they waited for acceptance letters. One young woman was having a particularly bad time with her family. She had applied to 20 med schools. One day as her mother told her (by phone) that she got a waiting list (letter #19) I had a hard time calming her down. A friend was passing the the office where we were and stepped in. He asked how we were, and then asked my friend how the med school applications were going. And she became upset again. AND then he commented “why do you want to be a doctor, you’re only going to marry and have some kids. Become a teacher…” She became even more upset. I grabbed his hand, walked him out to the hallway and told him “George, GET LOST. Now. That’s all her parents and relatives have been telling her.” I have to calm her down again.” Her last letter (#20) was the acceptance she was waiting for. Her parents often added in “Nice Jewish girls become teachers, not doctors.”
George wanted to be physicist so he could become rich. George was not very bright. George was a Republican… but I repeat myself.
Frankensteinbeck
@Tom:
As a full-time writer (a rare privilege) I am even at work when I sleep. I stopped dreaming about anything other than the book I’m working on at the time years ago. That’s useful, but it does emphasize the weird ‘Even when I’m not visibly working, I’m working’ aspect.
That said, I’ve had jobs like fast food and lived in poverty. This job is sooooo much better! The hours may be longer, but they’re sure more fun.
Ultraviolet Thunder
Another advantage of working from home: the food is better. I’m stuck in the office for a couple of weeks and can barely choke down this appalling Folgers. Tastes like forest fire runoff. I have run out of decent tea and I’m reduced to this to stay awake.
Next week I’ll be in Milwaukee, Raleigh/Durham and Indianapolis. On the road again.
rikyrah
@rk:
Well, I will take the time to point out that you’re talking about White women, because Black women have always worked.
My great-grandfather, a former slave, had three daughters. He made sure all of them got an education, because, in his words:
” The only children my daughters will take care of – are their own.”
So, by the time my grandmother married in 1905, she had her Masters degree. Now, a Black woman could pretty much only be a teacher in Jim Crow South, but that’s what she and her sisters were.
But, she, nor her sisters, ever toiled in someone else’s house.
Something she departed to her four daughters, who were all educated before Brown v. Board came down.
I take nothing away from Hillary, who undoubtedly, put up with much shyt -professionally.
satby
@PurpleGirl:
Was a refrain said to almost every woman of my age or older. Implied, of course, was that we only had value as wives and mothers and any silly dreams we might have of our future were subservient to the need for us to become wives and mothers.
Edited to add: not always implied, often specified out loud.
satby
@rikyrah: true that!
Ultraviolet Thunder
@satby:
I think touch typing is not necessary for IT people. I was a mainframer from ’82-01. I learned on those great IBM terminal keyboards. Lots of special characters and function keys. You had to be able to look at it.
I am fast now.
Touch typing is necessary for transcription, and who types from shorthand notes any more?
Tripod
@Matt:
I feel your pain.
Patricia Kayden
@rikyrah: Your Grandfather sounds like a super guy. I’ve come across several articles highlighting that Black women are the most educated in terms of race and gender in the U.S. so your Grandfather was ahead of his time.
http://www.inflexwetrust.com/2015/05/24/video-black-women-are-ranked-the-most-educated-in-america-in-both-race-gender/
satby
@Ultraviolet Thunder:
Medical and legal transcriptionists don’t type from shorthand, they transcribe from voice recordings, but they do. They need to be fast to get hired too.
PurpleGirl
@sherparick: I have a friend who worked for IBM in several capacities. He does not like Hillary all that much. But one day he told me that the problem wasn’t that she used her personal e-mail account, rather it was that the State Department used e-mail at all for official business. (Did I mention that his last positions at IBM were in the area of Internet Security?)
Dork
A lot of Daves around here.
Matt McIrvin
@Randy P: I’ve known a lot of male programmers who never learned to touch-type. They insist that they can get along fine with two-finger hunt-and-peck. And when you read their code, they tend to use short, cryptic variable names and rarely write coherent comments.
But the fear of a female programmer being pigeonholed into clerical work if she has typing skills is something I never thought of. Though the very early dominance of computer programming by women was probably because, at the time, it was thought of as a low-level clerical job, one step up from being a keypuncher. Many of the early ones were former “computers” themselves, the young women who mass-produced complex calculations for large technical projects. And then the social status of software engineering rose and the women were gradually driven out.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@satby:
Agreed. My point was no-look touch typing was required for transcribing notes, but that was an old secretarial pool function. These days typing has many different uses, and not looking at the keyboard isn’t as necessary.
My high school typing class (’70s) had typewriters with blank key caps for some tests.
satby
So I went after a self described “under 30 millennial” in my buddy the journalist’s FB post after he said this:
And one of the responses is from a female of about my age, lecturing me about “sounding angry”.
maurinsky
I don’t think I could work at home. I like to keep work and home very separate from each other. I like to pretend I’m unemployed when I’m home or on vacation, so I don’t think or talk about work, or spend too much money.
I took an aptitude test in the very early 80s in middle school, and it said I could do anything I wanted to. Gave me absolutely nothing specific, which is what I was hoping for.
My maternal grandmother was an immigrant, and she worked – she was the “janitress” at the Catholic school her children went to, she cleaned in exchange for reduced tuition for her 6 kids. My mother went to secretarial school instead of high school, and she loved working, but she quit when she got married because that was what she was expected to do (mid 60’s).
Tripod
@rikyrah:
That’s my biggest beef with Sandersland. It’s vested in American Calvinist Cold War economic propaganda. Hard working dad, middle class, white, stay at home mom. It was a slim reed of the population.
LAO
@Ultraviolet Thunder: same thing. Which is why I failed typing!
PurpleGirl
@bystander: Ah, Trump’s bankruptcies have all been business ones. He has not done a personal bankruptcy. He is also an incredibly bad businessman because he over burdens his companies with debt (those “great” deals he makes) and then has to close them or sell them, i.e., that’s how he loses money operating a cas1no.
Randy P
@Ultraviolet Thunder: My first language was APL on a mainframe and my second was FORTRAN with punch cards.
Nevertheless, touch typing is hugely valuable for programming. You just have to expand your knowledge of the keys to include a pretty thorough knowledge of that top row. Which didn’t take all that long.
MomSense
@LAO:
I graduated a year before you and I too had to take a typing class to graduate. Also too home economics.
A S D F J K L ; [return]
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Randy P:
APL is the only ‘language’ I never admitted knowing. It just didn’t click with me. I learned Machine Language and Basic on my own in the ’70s, got a business programming degree and did batch COBOL and CICS on mainframes for insurance companies for years. I loved programming but came to hate sitting all day. I’ve been shunning desk jobs for the last 15 years. Field service engineer for industrial lasers suits me well now.
These days I deny having had an IT career. Too many people want to know why their WiFi connection on their tablet computer drops or whatever and I got no time for that.
Mary
@rikyrah: I think the point is not so much that women didn’t work, but rather that they were limited in the types of jobs they could work. I’d imagine that was doubly so for women of color.
D58826
@satby: And Wilson was a racist and FDR allowed social security to pass when it excluded African Americans. Time change, people change, opinions change. I would hope that a sign of leadership is to modify your opinions and policies as the world changes.
Mary
@Matt McIrvin: There was a great podcast a few months ago – I think it was Planet Money – about how the decrease in women programmers was correlated with the rise of personal computers, which were often marketed as toys for boys. Many boys started learning basic programming skills at a young age, and thus started with a leg up when they got to college. One woman they interviewed said that because she did really well in math in high school, she was steered towards computer science as a major. When she got to college, she asked a question in her CS 101 class and was basically mocked by the prof for not knowing something all of the men in her class knew before they even arrived. She ened up leaving CS altogether and majored in marketing or something like that. The whole thing made me really sad.
Randy P
On the flip side of the male/female typing issue: When I started working in 82, engineers wrote their reports by hand and gave them to a secretary for typing and distribution. But there was one computer facility with a bunch of VAX minicomputers available via terminal (we had not yet convinced management that a “personal computer” could have any use). VAX had a typesetting program called, as I recall, RUNOFF, and a few people were starting to use that. It worked by manually embedding codes in the text, the way HTML or LaTeX still does.
Anyway I gradually became aware that at one end of the room was a group of word-processing stations, used exclusively by temp secretaries. These were WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get), meaning the fonts show on screen. That was a new concept.
I asked for and received permission to use the word processing stations when the temps didn’t need them. Boy did I get funny looks from people. It’s acceptable for boys to type on the VAX station and use a manly program like RUNOFF. But very much not, to use those girly word-processing stations.
D58826
@PurpleGirl:
Actually in the 21st century new economy that is a feature not a bug, He sells the debt to the rubes, pockets the money, files for bankruptcy and lets the rubes take the haircut
Miss Bianca
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: HRC and JLC together, too priceless! Thanks for the morning lift!
ellie
@Germy Shoemangler: I work from home. I am the editor of a trade magazine. I started in the office and then moved home later. I would say more than half the company’s employees (B2B publisher) work from home.
OldDave
@Randy P:
Not much need for touch typing there. ;-)
Original Lee
@BillinGlendaleCA: Congratulations! That is awesome.
StringOnASick
In 1991 I had decided to hang up my MS in hydrogeology because the jobs had just evaporated. I refinanced my little house to pay off the car and make a career change. I had to get my folks to co-sign, and my dad being self employed almost scuttled the deal; thankfully my mom had a job with the Social Security Admin. Still, the paperwork listed my name, followed by “an unmarried woman”. It enraged me, and 1991 is not that long ago!
My mom’s second husband(1950’s) was Mr Party, so she worked with 2 small kids. She’d pay off their car and then he’d go refi it to get party money and she had no say in the matter. It happened several times.
Original Lee
@Baud: Not to mention, the report says many people at State didn’t use the official system because it was so old that they wouldn’t have been able to get their work done if they used it.
StringOnASick
@StringOnASick: I should add that I’ve told that second story to every young woman who gives me the “feminist means man hater” line of BS.
chopper
@Mary:
working from home is great and it sucks.
Poopyman
@StringOnASick:
I saw what you did there.
gvg
The Hillary hate after Bill was elected always amazed me and made me a lifetime Democrat. I guess my parents including my dad managed to shelter me because I had thought those women’s roles stereotypes were dying. It seemed that all the ?TV shows I watched made fun of that old fashioned mindset. I knew my mom didn’t want me to play with barbies because of protecting me from sexism but I didn’t see the harm and was always told I could choose any field. I had been told the dumb rules my mom had had to follow but it seemed like stories from the old days. Hillary hate and Rush Limbaugh were just amazing to me. I felt like he and those other old loudmouths were insulting my mom who I loved and wondered how they could be so stupid as to anger so many people. I still feel that way. Everyone has a mom or other relative who worked and took care of children. Insulting them was dumb.
I have to say that I saw the first impeach Clinton sign before he was inaugerated and I was shocked because in my civics view you have to have actually have done something serious to be impeached. Ordinary people had already been innoculated with poison before he was in office which means I learned to ignore their accusations from the get go. that’s actually a problem if a Clinton actually does do something wrong but on the whole I have found it pretty safe to ignore all hardliner accusations against any democrat. I still don’t care about the blow job from a political point of view.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Randy P:
When I started in programming we could hand-code COBOL in pencil on coding sheets, then hand them to the secretary to type into files. The secretary could type like the wind, which was surprising because she had no left forearm and two fingers at the elbow. Really accurate, too. She transcribed every error and misspelling with perfect fidelity.
Original Lee
My mother is a little bit older than Hillary. She was a pharmacist until she got pregnant. She only needed one more year to get her permanent license, but her employer sent her home as soon as the pregnancy was obvious and she therefore was never able to work as a pharmacist again. When all of the kids were in school, she did some volunteer secretarial work for Habitat for Humanity, but she never did any paid work for anyone again.
She told me pharmacy school was very tough. She was fortunate in that there were a couple of other women in the program, and they bonded and supported each other. She said there was one professor (either calculus or physics, I forget which) who failed the women on principle, because women’s brains weren’t capable of technical thought and if they did well in the class, they must have had some man helping them cheat.
When I was in graduate school, the women would take off their wedding rings when they went in for job interviews. The one woman in the department who was returning to school after raising her kids was swamped with job offers, but many of the other married women only got jobs as a hiring bonus for their husbands. The single women frequently did several postdocs before finding permanent work.
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
@StringOnASick:
Original Lee
Bother – used one of the banned words above. Hopefully my post above will be un-moderated soon.
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
@StringOnASick:
The reason your deed read “unmarried” wasn’t nefarious – it was because spouses automatically get rights in and to real property by virtue of status. By stating your marital status, it denoted that to anyone that would later come into ownership of the property (or who might take a mortgage interest) that your period of title has no potential side claimant.
bemused
A good primer for the young folks on how it was for women 50 years ago is “When Everything Changed”, 1960 to present, by Gail Collins. Fascinating and infuriating history. I’m over 60 and I had forgotten many of the events.
LAO
@MomSense: I had to take Home Economics, as well! We may have gone to the same school. lol
But what amazes me, is that my mother, who graduated from Smith College in 1965 was required to take a class called “Gracious Living.” The point of which, was to teach women to be good homemakers. I love my mother and she is great mom, but I can attest that, the course never took with her. Although to her credit, she is the world’s best packer — suit cases, cars. etc. And a great ironer.
D58826
OT but team player Bernie is going to debate the Donald before the June 7th primary. Now I understand why Bernie is on board – free media. Trump will get one more platform to bash Hillary. If Bernie defends her it kind of undercuts his reason still in the primary. If he doesn’t then it will be 2 hours of Hillary bashing because Trump doesn’t really take Bernie seriously. But he might just throw a few barbs Bernie’s way to show him how quickly his balloon will be deflated in the general
All in all a win for Bernie, a win for Trump and a loss for Hillary. Good job there Bernie Keep it up and maybe President Trump will appoint you ambassador to Antarctica.
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
The more I think about this notion of a Bernie/Trump debate, the more depressed I get. I won’t watch, but will undoubtedly be treated to a barrage of clips every time I walk by a TV.
What brand of knitting needles should I buy to spear my eardrums (so I don’t hear the aria of derp delivered in thick New Yorker) and stab myself in the eyes (so I don’t see the Bernie scowls or the Trump anus mouth)?
chopper
@Ultraviolet Thunder:
oh yeah, office coffee that tastes like it was brewed in a sink at a baseball game. don’t miss that at all.
ruemara
@Matt: yeah, how dare she get paid as a private citizen. And super predators? That bitch. If she’d cast a vote for that crime bill, campaigned on it to show she was tough on crime and called them sociopaths, that would’ve been much better. And lord knows, she was the only person voting for the Iraq war, not one of many who voted for more than just “go to war” but actual levels of response.
Hope you have a great day, I’m sure you’re busy molesting goats.
Growing up in the 80’s, I ignored typing as a skill and when I got my first job, never made coffee. My mother despaired of my secretarial skills and the family always told me I could aim high and be an executive assistant or a physician’s assistant. The worst vestige of patriarchal views that wasn’t familial came from the doctor’s office. I wanted a medical procedure with some risk to my fertility, my doctor told me to come back when I’d had kids, after I talked it out with my husband. The delay of over decade cost me an even more invasive series of operations. Asshole.
scav
The typing at least proved generally useful, but the shorthand they threw at us in the same class? That seems really niche any more. ahhh, high school: profounding not seeing what already was rolling across the job horizon. they’d gotten excited and purchased an already out of date card reader, stuffed it in the back of the math room and ignored it.
Emma
@D58826: Actually, it might not be a loss for Hillary at all, if they play it right. Two hours of two offensive white farts attacking her would really work in targeted ads.
Helen
@bemused: Thank you for that. I am looking for a book for a 13 year old girl who wants to be an engineer. That will be perfect.
chopper
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class:
they can call it “battle of the annoying NY accents: queens vs brooklyn”. sub head: “two bitter old white men yell about things”
CONGRATULATIONS!
Ahh, horrible memories. My parents split in 1977. First judge screwed my mom out of quite a bit of money on the sale of the house – which he refused to even enforce for two years. Second one hosed us on child support. Bank wouldn’t give my mom a loan for a condo – a woman with a degree and a job – without a male co-signer. Yep, that used to be LEGAL. All the way through the mid-80s at least as I recall. Kids don’t even believe me when I tell them that these days.
PurpleGirl
As a typist I’ve never broken a speed of 40-45 wpm. In high school I took two terms of typing. The first term teacher was an older woman who saw things in traditional way. The second term teacher was much younger woman; after failing one test she told “I want you to concentrate on being accurate because you’re going to college and won’t depend on typing to get a job (HA!!!!!).
I’ve mentioned before that I have a personal quirk where if I stare at a copyboard I go into a fugue-like state and stop “seeing”. Well, in that second term of typing what prompted that remark from the teacher was that I went into a fugue for just a few seconds but when I came back my eyes skipped 17 words. At 5 points a word, I lost 85 points right off the bat. I failed the test. With my speech problems getting a job was always hard. Being an accurate typist helped me get all my jobs — even the paralegal position. I’ve also usually had a personal network connection in the office that hired me.
When I was in publishing as a production and/or a copyeditor I was always sidetracked into the science field after the job at Academic Press. I’ve had a love/hate relation with typing for a long time. (Oh, I never did learn to take dictation and that lost me a few good positions.)
satby
@chopper: I dated a moron who didn’t like the better quality coffee I made at home, he wanted his Folgers. So I had to brew 2 pots of coffee, one for him and one for me because I wasn’t drinking that dreck. And I got called a snob for my trouble. And I like classical music in the morning, which he termed funeral music (the local station plays Baroque almost exclusively). He couldn’t wait to come downstairs and turn the TV on.
He took off with my at-the-time best friend and they’re now living together. I don’t miss either, and my revenge is that they live with each other, which is a crueler punishment than anything I could come up with.
eclare
@chopper: With extra finger wagging!
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
@satby:
We’re going camping this long weekend. I’ve purchased a campfire/campstove-ready 12 cup percolator. I’m hesitant to use actual good coffee in it, and we’ve been arguing about what to put in it in order to moderate the undoubted burned affect. I’m thinking canned Cafe du Monde may work.
rikyrah
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Peanut and I had a conversation – she’s in her WHY phase –
” Hillary Clinton would be the FIRST female President?”-Peanut
” Yes.” – Me.
” Why? Why would she be the FIRST?”-Peanut
” Because, no other woman has been.”-Me.
” WHY?”-Peanut
It’s hard to explain the history of gender roles to an 8 year old who has been told she can do anything she’s willing to work her azz off to study for in life.
I love that. I love that her automatic default is – OF COURSE, a woman should have been President. Of course, a woman can be.
rk
@rikyrah:
No I’m talking about East Asian women. They’ve always been treated as and in many places are still treated as beings only good for cooking cleaning and reproducing. Yes, within that context some women were able to gain some control within their households, but never anything outside the confines of their homes.
bemused
@Helen:
Collins covers a lot of territory and it is pretty amazing how much changed for women in just a generation. Yet, there still is much that hasn’t changed enough, sexism, misogyny, etc.
What our daughters and granddaughters benefited from was being able compete in sports. I don’t remember any women sports teams when I was a kid.
This is a story about the antagonism toward Title IX in 1974. Congresswoman Pat Schroeder visited a Denver high school in her district after the bill passed. The basketball coach told his team, “Show Mrs. Schroeder what you think of Title IX,” and the boys turned around and mooned her. Unimaginable something like this happening today, not without huge repercussions. I noted that the coach called her Mrs. Schroeder, not Congresswoman.
PurpleGirl
I once saw either a news segment or a documentary about the history of abortion. They showed a pro-legal abortion sign made by two young women. What blew my mind was that the sign featured a hanger. A modern, plastic hanger. I wanted to scream and toss the TV out the window. These young women didn’t know that women used bent wire hangers which then in turn caused internal injuries that women died from. Yes, I’m an old who remembers the stories of women dying from self-inflicted abortions.
D58826
@chopper: also get to pick the music and the room temperature at home
Matt McIrvin
@Dork: These are the Daves I know, I know.
D58826
@srv: OK you get your 15 minutes of fame. Now you can back to torturing flies while the rest of us go out and lower our American flags to half staff. (or would flying it upside down be more appropriate – the international distress signal). I really do not believe this is happening.
PurpleGirl
@rk: May I add poor white woman to that group of women who always worked. My maternal grandmother immigrated here from Sicily circa 1910. She had 8 living children and my maternal grandfather was a day laborer. She had to contribute to the family’s finances. So, she did sewing (piece work). A sewing machine was brought to the house and every day a contractor brought and picked up the sewing she did the day before. A sleeve seam was like 5 cents, an hem could be maybe 10 cents. I point out that she came Sicily because at the time, Sicilians were considered almost as blacks, like the Irish. They were looked down on by the Northern Italians (Alta Italia).
Matt McIrvin
@ruemara: I think it’s valid to look back on the “superpredator” panic and see it as one of the many things that led to police treating black men as if they were the Incredible Hulk, but the Sanders people seem to think of it as a magic talking point that should neutralize every advantage Clinton has with African-Americans.
Matt McIrvin
@rikyrah: My daughter used to talk about being the first female President, and I told her I thought there probably would be one well before she was old enough. I’m hoping that is actually the case.
(Now she’s saying she wants to be a chemist.)
Matt McIrvin
@Mary:
I saw that happen–I was one of those kids, only in my case I never actually majored in CS in college, I just jumped sideways into a career later on.
And it’s true: in the 1980s the canonical image in fiction and advertising of someone who was good with computers suddenly changed from some sort of distinguished scientist or technician to a young “whiz kid”. The whiz kid was nearly always a little boy with glasses, a child prodigy from Central Casting, though they’d often make a nod toward diversity by making him black or disabled (sometimes both).
Original Lee
@chopper: I wonder how two guys with New York accents will play in California. Except for Los Angeles, doesn’t the state generally hold the East Coast in contempt?
Iowa Old Lady
@Emma: The strategy of both men (such as it is) must be to rip Clinton. Just the other day, Trump said he wanted Sanders’s voters, so he shouldn’t be going after Sanders, who’s obviously not going to be his opponent in November.
Have we ever seen Trump in a one-on-one debate? I don’t think he’s very good, but then given that this is Fox, who knows?
PurpleGirl
Let’s not forget Rear Admiral Dr. Grace Hopper: programming pioneer.
Matt McIrvin
@PurpleGirl: And Hopper actually came at it from academic mathematics, instead of being a “computer”. To hear her talk about her work on what eventually became COBOL, its weird verbose syntax came about on the theory that a language that was English-like would be more accessible to suits without mathematical training, because they seemed to recoil whenever she showed them algebraic symbols. COBOL didn’t exactly work out that way, but it was a harbinger of later work on user interfaces for ordinary people.
kdaug
@Germy Shoemangler: Programmer
nutella
@Ultraviolet Thunder:
In the early 70s, when I was in high school, I took a ‘career interest’ test. It didn’t look at abilities but asked about various aspects of personality and preferences and then matched your preferences to existing professions which were of course identified as male or female.
My match score (I’m a woman) was very low against all female professions. They showed an average woman’s score against the list of professions as a line and my line on the same graph was exactly opposite.
My highest score was for my father’s profession (naval officer). Oddly enough I had a low match for army officer so the two officer groups must be quite different?!
The Navy wouldn’t have let me into the Academy for another few years (1976) and even if I’d gone there it was many years later before women naval officers were allowed on ships.
I expect the test was not intended to measure students’ gender conformance but it was amusing to see that it did.
satby
@PurpleGirl: I’m old enough to remember (and know) a couple of girls who tried it, though none died. The crazy stuff desperate women who were unexpectedly pregnant tried was unbelievable.
And the right wing is almost succeeding in bringing those days back
StringOnASick
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class:That “unmarried woman” designation was not on my original mortgage, and when my future husband bought his place, it didn’t say “an unmarried man” after his name on the paperwork. I think it was just assumed that women couldn’t buy a house on their own usually (and at the special federal program rate of “only” 10%, not many could), hence the need to add “an unmarried woman” on my new set of mortgage documents. The local economy was is horrible shape by then too, which may have added to the mortgage company paranoia.
Shana
@satby: when I was in 7th grade, in 1974, everyone in my grade took a math aptitude test to see if we were ready to go into Algebra the next year. My score was borderline so my Dad went in to talk to the guidance counselor about what she thought I should do in 8th grade. She told him “Oh, I never encourage girls to take Algebra. They just get married after high school so it isn’t necessary.”
I think he just sat there for a few seconds before unloading on her. I took Algebra in 8th grade.
He told that story all over our relatively small community and he heard that the story got back to the counselor who denied she’d ever said it.
Yeah, “kids” today have no idea how radically things have changed for women. Thank god.