New this week: Four
Australian ads from the 1950s, from The Australian Women's Weekly:
Myzone period pain pills, Camelia
pads, and two from Johnson & Johnson company: Meds
tampons and Modess pads - Tampax
ad, 1939 (True Story magazine, U.S.A.) - Mum
deodorant (1926, McCall's magazine, U.S.A.) - humor
Next update is 4 July
I am indexing all the new site pages for the past many months. Someone's
gotta do it!
Letters to your MUM
Permanent Male Stupidity
Hi,
I think on your third page you have what does PMS stand for? My mum
herself says that it stands for Permanent Male Stupidity [this MUM would
never, of course, say that]. :) Just thought I'd add that. Lovely site,
btw. I am enjoying it muchly.
Later she wrote,
My mom just said that about my dad when things were bad. That's fine.
Hope you're well, and always, females are interesting topics, being female.
Um, I think it's an awesome site. [Many thanks!]
toodles.
"Females are interesting topics, being female"
reminds me of yet another reason why I started this
site.
Last week I heard Terry Gross, host of the Public Broadcasting radio
program Fresh Air, interview Jeffrey Eugenides,
who wrote The Virgin Suicides, which the current
American movie of the same name is based upon. (I have neither read the
book nor seen the movie.)
I felt I had a soul brother! Eugenides,
like me, grew up in a family of boy siblings; I often felt sorry for my
mother, who herself grew up in a family of girls; she seemed stranded on
a one-gender Isle of Man (my apologies to the Manx). Things
female in our family were little known and regarded less, and became a
big mystery for me.
My father, a colonel in the army and a West Point graduate, was a tough
guy (the stories I could tell!), but at the same time played piano, guitar,
banjo and the organ and was a heavy reader (Henry Adams, for example, for
fun). He hung reproductions of Goya, Manet and the Impressionists on our
walls. When I was 11 he started subscriptions to what amounted to the Opera-of-the-Month,
Classical-Record-of-the-Month and Art-Book of-the-Month clubs. I devoured
the records and books, which turned into my greatest passions, classical
music and visual art. I remember following the libretto of Aida for hours,
time and time again, something hard to share with other boys. (But I played
football and basketball and collected fish and snakes and lizards in aquariums
and terrariums in my bedroom - Mom was very tolerant - so I wasn't totally
off track.)
But I never heard any expression of love for these things; I think
my father felt that would be womanly.
This inability to show his softer side troubled him and me, and is
a good topic for a book.
But back to The Virgin Suicides.
Eugenides likened his writing the book to that of an anthropologist
observing the habits of an unknown tribe - exactly my feeling about starting
this museum. Pardon the racial reference, but I have
often thought of myself in pith helmet and short khaki pants, à
la a cartoon Stanley and Dr. Livingston, peeking around a tree and spying
on an unknown people - Woman - boiling some poor sap in a pot.
What this means is that I am learning as much as many of you, although
before most of you, even though some of you are female. (Here's more of
my biography.)
P.S.
Before I started the museum, I told myself I would not repeat what I did
with my book about German castles.
I lived in Germany for 13 years and thought I could make one short,
generic guide for Americans to any of the about 15,000 castles and castle
ruins in that country. It's usually possible to poke around the mostly
unattended ruins, but many have no signs telling their history or what
room was what. With my book - it would fit anybody's back pocket - someone
could inspect a castle and refer to certain features in the guide to find
out where people lived, what the windows and doors told about its age,
etc. There wasn't anything like it in German or English, and probably still
isn't.
I spent almost two years of my spare time compiling 1500 note cards,
many from studying Otto Piper's famous Burgenkunde,
a 1912 guide to castle construction and much more; I still have my reprint
from 1967.
Then I lost confidence.
Germans, who are famously gründlich
- thorough - would pick it apart. There are
clubs and journals in Germany devoted to the minutiae of castles - adult
Germans also have cowboy-and-Indian clubs, inspired by Karl May's books
about the American West; the Lone Ranger started in Germany - and I could
see members and readers by turns laughing and screaming about my errors.
Who does this Ami - the sometimes ironic German term for Americans - think
he is?
So I threw away my cards. A good friend of mine, a writer, sometimes
reminds me of this, his voice trailing off in disbelief. I have read that
crises of confidence sometimes afflict writers.
When I decided to start MUM, I told myself I would not give up, and
that it wouldn't mean anything unless I saw it through. (I have interesting
ideas all the time - the overwhelming majority being legal, I assure you!
- that I don't act on.) I didn't and don't know everything about menstruation,
or anything close to it, and there are many others who know more. My contribution
would be as a purveyor of information about what interested me, the cultural
history.
I haven't given up.
. . . has died, according to a site visitor.
The cops catch the robbers
I don't want to turn this into the Armed Robbery Web Site, but some
of you may wonder about the outcome of my awful
experience on 8 June.
Two days ago I called the police to tell them I thought that two people,
not one, had robbed me at gunpoint, because it would have been impossible
for the person I heard and saw behind me to run up a small incline at my
right without my hearing them.
"Yes, we know," said the detective, as I remember it. "It
was two and we have them! We were thinking of calling you [!]. We nabbed
them after they robbed someone else, for a total of three robberies."
"You said the one with the gun was about 16 years old. Well, the
boys were 13 and 14. And you were right about the pistol's being a .45 -
but it's a BB [pellet] gun!" Which makes no difference in the eyes
of the law; it's still armed robbery, a felony. They're juveniles and will
not be tried as adults - or so I think.
The court has subpoenaed me to appear in early July to testify against
them.
The days since the robbery have been harrowing. I feared the robbers
would see me and follow me home, and it unnerved me to think that they would
see me in the neighborhood, whereas I might not recognize them. Since I
walk to and from the subway through the crime area five days a week because
of work, going to work had become increasingly difficult. (I walk miles
every day for exercise and haven't owned a car since I had a Volkswagen
in Heidelberg, Germany, 26 years ago.)
In despair I found a Web site dealing with victims of crime and learned
that my reactions were common and that it would help to visit a trauma counselor.
The day the police told me the good news was the day I was to call up trauma
help; I'll postpone that now. I feel a lot better.
You have privacy here
What happens when you visit this site?
Nothing.
I get no information about you from any
source when you visit, and I have no idea who you
are, before, during or after your visit.
This is private - period.
Is this the new
millennium or even century?
You can get the correct information
if you go to these pages published by the U S Naval Observatory:
"whenIs")
A comprehensive site from the Royal Observatory, Greenwich will put right any doubts:
Help Wanted: This Museum Needs a
Public Official For Its Board of Directors
Your MUM is doing the paper work necessary to become eligible to receive
support from foundations as a 501(c)3 nonprofit corporation. To achieve
this status, it helps to have a American public official - an elected or
appointed official of the government, federal, state or local - on its board of directors.
What public official out there
will support a museum for the worldwide culture of
women's health and menstruation?
Eventually I would also like to entice people experienced in the law,
finances and fund raising to the board.
Do You Have Irregular Menses?
If so, you may have polycystic ovary syndrome
[and here's a support association for it].
Jane Newman, Clinical Research Coordinator at Brigham
and Women's Hospital, Harvard University School of Medicine, asked
me to tell you that
Irregular menses identify women at high risk for polycystic ovary syndrome
(PCOS), which exists in 6-10% of women of
reproductive age. PCOS is a major cause of infertility
and is linked to diabetes.
Learn more about current
research on PCOS at Brigham and Women's
Hospital, the University of Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania State University
- or contact Jane Newman.
If you have fewer than six
periods a year, you may be eligible to participate
in the study!
New this week: Four
Australian ads from the 1950s, from The Australian Women's Weekly:
Myzone period pain pills, Camelia
pads, and two from Johnson & Johnson company: Meds
tampons and Modess pads - Tampax
ad, 1939 (True Story magazine, U.S.A.) - Mum
deodorant (1926, McCall's magazine, U.S.A.) - humor
© 2000 Harry Finley. It is illegal
to reproduce or distribute work on this Web site in any manner or medium
without written permission of the author. Please report suspected violations
to hfinley@mum.org