News; Fannish & Historical

[neadods]

Fannish news - Big Finish just announced their audio license has been extended to December 2012. I'm totally going to have to buy a bigger shelf


Historical news: This was buried deep in the WaPo and really needs to be spread around a little more: Elizabeth Hobbs Keckly [sic] finally has a memorial on her grave. One hopes, after that article, that the memorial is spelled correctly.

Keckley was born a slave, but eventually got the chance to buy freedom for herself and her son - a sum, she points out proudly in her autobiography Behind the Scenes in the Lincoln White House; or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House every penny of which she earned (it was a loan from friends, which she paid back). As the book title tells you, she would become the seamstress for Mary Todd Lincoln; among other things, she made the Inaugural Gown which (if memory serves) is one of the ones on display in the Smithsonian Museum of American History.

However, the publication of the book would ruin the friendship between Keckley and the former First Lady; Lincoln's son would have the book banned, although it is freely available now. Considering how dismissive it is of Mrs. Lincoln's intelligence - Keckley doesn't outright say "her brain must roll around in her skull like a BB on a 4-lane highway, bless her heart" but she certainly verges on the historical equivalent - this is probably not surprising.

Keckley's body was moved when the graveyard was bought by developers and the new grave was unmarked until this ceremony.


Also in the news about famous African Americans (although this time on the front page), Sir Paul McCartney sang "Michelle" to the First Lady last night, joking afterwards that it was the first time he risked being punched out by a President.

Comments

[persiflage-1.livejournal.com]

Sir Paul is the only person I wouldn't groan about singing that song to me!! (Up until my 20s, people regularly sang a bit of that song to me on meeting me - it resulted in much eyerolling and irritation because everyone *always* assumed they were the first!)

[neadods.livejournal.com]

The name I don't use showed up in several songs... it's one of the reasons why I don't use it anymore.

[persiflage-1.livejournal.com]

Heh, I can understand that...

[ladyfox7oaks.livejournal.com]

YEah, I get "If you knew Suzi!" even NOW... I'm 38 people, it's not as cutesy a song as you think, and the lyrics are more risque than you think!

[persiflage-1.livejournal.com]

I'm 41...

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

Yikes. I'm rather glad my RL name rhymes with *nothing* and has as a consequence appeared in *no* songs.

[persiflage-1.livejournal.com]

Lucky you!

[flaviarassen.livejournal.com]

Funny, the only time I ever got that was at a theme restaurant (or someplace with a ragtime piano & the straw-hat guys - I forget where), & I put up with it because of that reason. But I think my general demeanor keeps people from calling me "Suzi." Maybe you could suddenly grow to 5'10"? That would help!

(Ok, ';m being a total smart-alec...)

& then a friend of mine chose to name her daughter "Lydia", only to be completely surprised how many of her friends knew that one...

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Is she getting Lydia the Tattooed Lady or "Drink, drink, drink to Lydia Pink, pink, pink"?

[flaviarassen.livejournal.com]

I've never even heard of the 2nd song!!

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I only know the chorus off the top of my head; it's about snake oil medicine at the turn of the last century.

Drink, drink, drink
To Lydia Pink, pink, pink
The savior of the human race!

She invented
A medicinal compound
Efficacious in every case!

Hmmm... apparently I have the name wrong. Not a clue what the video's about, but here's a good You Tube version.

[flaviarassen.livejournal.com]

Oh, of course - Lydia Pinkham!
She made "women's elixirs" - G-d only
knows what that stuff really was....

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Probably bathtub gin.

[redpanda13.livejournal.com]

According to the Post, Obama was singing along into his wife's ear.... Sigh.

Good news for Mrs Keckly, a strong woman who deserves recognition. I can't help imagining that she was thinking, "I was a slave, and this shopaholic ditz is First Lady...."

FYI, the kitty who needed a home the other day has found one! But plenty others need one too.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Judging from her own book, she spent much of her life thinking "Why am I surrounded by stupid white people?" However, in several of her "Mrs. Lincoln is so dumb..." scenarios, she really is being pretty dumb.

I'm glad the kitty has a home!

[redpanda13.livejournal.com]

Someone said that nobody would have listened to Einstein if he'd been from Alabama. They sure as heck wouldn't have listened to him if he'd been a black woman and a former slave. Who knows how intelligent she actually was... and a lot of other people, Shakespeare's hypothetical sister included.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

She gives every indication of having been extremely intelligent.

[fabricdragon.livejournal.com]

oh! thanks for the heads up!!!

Hurray for project gutenberg

[pagerd]

http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/24968

Re: Hurray for project gutenberg

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Cool!

[flaviarassen.livejournal.com]

Even if she'd been completely complimentary, public figures rarely enjoy having their private lives being exposed for other people's personal gain. Let's be fair!

[neadods.livejournal.com]

True! Although the book as a whole was much less "I'm making money off of MTL" than "What a long, strange trip this has been." And a long strange trip it was; she ends up working for a branch of the family that owned her, having specifically sought them out. As she points out, it wasn't the family that was the problem, it was the slavery, and that was over.

[flaviarassen.livejournal.com]

I'm sure, but I was looking at it from the Lincoln's point of view -
of course Robert would have wanted to stop the book, no matter what
was in it.