The Citadel names a woman as its top cadet for the first time in 175 years

From Women in the World authored by WITW Staff:

“For the first time in its 175-year history, famed South Carolina military college the Citadel has named a woman as regimental commander — a title conferred upon the student considered to be the academy’s top cadet. Sarah Zorn, a 21-year-old junior, was awarded the position — and a gilt-handled sword to complement it — by the previous regimental commander during the Citadel’s formal graduation parade, which is also known as the Long Gray Line. And while school officials such as Citadel Commandant of Cadets Geno F. Paluso II have hailed Zorn for not emphasizing the glass-ceiling shattering reality of the honor, female students at the school said that they took the recognition of Zorn’s excellence as a positive sign for all women at the academy.

“It says we can,” observed 18-year-old freshman Catherine Hill. ‘It says we can be with the guys — that we can do this.’”

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How Cities Make Money by Fining the Poor

From The New York Times Magazine authored by Mathew Shaer:

“In 2017, Micah West and Sara Wood of the S.P.L.C. drove to Corinth to open an investigation into the Municipal Court, with an eye toward later filing a lawsuit — the most effective way, they believed, to halt Judge John C. Ross’s jailing of low-income defendants. During court sessions, they would often walk down the hall to the clerk’s office, where defendants were permitted to use a landline phone to make a final plea for the cash that would set them free. The space amounted to an earthly purgatory: Secure the money, and you were saved. Fail, and you’d be sent to jail. “All around us, people would be crying or yelling, getting more and more desperate,” Wood recalled.

That October, she watched a 59-year-old man named Kenneth Lindsey enter the office, his lean arms hanging lank by his side, his face gaunt and pale. Lindsey had been in court for driving with an expired registration, but he hadn’t been able to afford the fines: He was suffering from hepatitis C and liver cancer, and he had spent the very last of his savings on travel to Tupelo for a round of chemotherapy. Until his next state disability check arrived, he was broke. “Can you help?” Lindsey whispered into the phone.

A few seconds of silence passed. “All right, then. Thanks anyway.”

Finally, around 1:45 p.m., Lindsey managed to get through to his sister. She barely had $100 herself, but she promised to drive it over after her shift was through.

Wood caught up with Lindsey in the parking lot later that day, and after identifying herself, asked if he would consider being interviewed by the S.P.L.C. “I don’t know,” Lindsey said, studying the ground. But soon enough, he called Wood to say he had changed his mind. “I’ve been paying these sons of bitches all my life,” he told her. ‘It’s time someone did something about it.’”

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Bernice Sadler, ‘Godmother of Title IX’, Dies at 90

From The New York Times authored by Katharine Q. Seelye:

“When Bernice Sandler was a schoolgirl in the 1930s and ’40s, she was annoyed that she was not allowed to do things that boys could do, like be a crossing guard, fill the inkwells or operate the slide projector.

When she was older, teaching part-time at the University of Maryland, she was told that she wasn’t being hired for a full-time job because “you come on too strong for a woman.” Another interviewer complained that women stayed home when their children were sick. Another rejected her by saying that she was “just a housewife who went back to school.”

By that time, which was 1969, Dr. Sandler was more than annoyed. She was good and mad. And that led her to become the driving force behind the creation of Title IX, the sweeping civil rights law of 1972 that barred sex discrimination by educational institutions that received federal funding.

Dr. Sandler, who died on Saturday at 90, was known as “the godmother of Title IX.” She was central to its development, passage and implementation

The law would change the landscape of education. It required that male and female students have equal access to admissions, resources and financial assistance, among other things.

“Every woman who has gone to college, gotten a law degree or a medical degree, was able to take shop instead of home-ec, or went to a military academy really owes her a huge debt,” Margaret Dunkle, a research colleague and friend, said in a telephone interview.”

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Domestic Violence Shelters Scramble To Keep Doors Open Amid Shutdown

From The Huffington Post authored by Melissa Jeltsen:

“Domestic violence shelters across the country are cobbling together funds to keep their doors open as the government shutdown hits the two-week mark.

Most shelters pay their staff, rent and expenses out of pocket, and are repaid with federal funds at the end of each month, Kim Gandy, the president of the National Network to End Domestic Violence explained.

The amount of time a shelter can continue operating without federal funds depends on its cash reserves, access to credit lines, and other sources of funding, such as state grants and private donors.

“A lot of shelters operate on the edge,” she said. “If there is nobody home in the government to send out reimbursement checks, some programs won’t be able to pay next month’s rent.”

On an average day, over 40,000 victims of domestic violence seek refuge in shelters across the nation. An additional 31,000 receive services, including counseling, legal advocacy and children’s support groups.”

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What Hillary Clinton wrote in a letter to an 8-year-old who lost her bid for class president

From CNN authored by Veronica Stracqualursi

“Hillary Clinton wrote a letter to an 8-year-old girl who lost an election for class president, telling the young student that she knows “too well, it’s not easy” to run for “a role that’s only been sought by boys.”

“While I know you may have been disappointed that you did not win President, I am so proud of you for deciding to run in the first place,” Clinton wrote in her letter to Martha Kennedy Morales, a third grader at a Maryland private school.
“As I know too well, it’s not easy when you stand up and put yourself in contention for a role that’s only been sought by boys,” Clinton wrote.
The Washington Post was the first to report on the letter, which Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill confirmed to CNN is authentic.”
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If You Feel Thankful, Write It Down. It’s Good For Your Health

From NPR authored by Maanvi Singh:

“Over this past year, lifestyle blogger Aileen Xu has kept a monthly gratitude list.

Sometimes it was the big stuff: “I’m grateful that my family is so understanding. I’m grateful so many people care.”

And sometimes it was life’s little blessings: “July 2018: I’m grateful for good hair after I shower.”

Xu started making such lists when she was in college, “at a point when I was just not in a very good place in my life.” Now, the 28-year-old lifestyle blogger and YouTuber recommends the practice to her nearly 750,000 subscribers.

It wasn’t a hard sell.

“I think just over the last few years there’s been more of a trend to focus on gratitude,” says psychologist Laurie Santos, who teaches a course on the science of well-being and happiness at Yale.

Gratitude is being endorsed by wellness blogs and magazines. You can buy different kinds of specific gratitude journals, or download apps that remind you to jot down your blessings.

“Those types of products can remind us to take time to be grateful,” Santos says. “But it’s also important to remember that gratitude is free.”

And noting your gratitude seems to pay off: There’s a growing body of research on the benefits of gratitude. Studies have found that giving thanks and counting blessings can help people sleep better, lower stress and improve interpersonal relationships. Earlier this year, a study found that keeping a gratitude journal decreased materialism and bolstered generosity among adolescents.”

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Why We Need Older Women in the Workplace

From The Cut authored by Lisa Miller:

“When I was about 30, I was hired to be an editor at The Wall Street Journal. There was no good reason for this. I was a pretty good writer, and I knew the rules of grammar and was in general interested in a lot of stuff. But nothing on my résumé would have pointed in the direction of a coveted job at the No. 2 daily paper in the land; I’m guessing there were lots of people more qualified in line for (and deserving of) that job.

But the person who hired me — ten years older, tough, funny, brilliant — saw something in me. Thank God. She could see that I was smart. She probably sensed that I had (have) a tolerance, and even an appetite, for punishing amounts of work. She probably liked that I wasn’t an apple-shiner. (She wasn’t an apple-shiner.)

I fell for her completely. How could I not? My boss was wicked. Sharp. Hilarious. Quick-witted. Irreverent. Also: kind, responsible, ethical, serious. Direct. A meritocrat. She loved people who made her laugh or think. She followed rules carefully and broke them knowingly. She loved wielding her power.

She wasn’t afraid. We worked in a newsroom, at desks arrayed like a kindergarten classroom, so as I edited stories at what seemed to me like a lightning pace, I could watch her transact business. She was intimidating — not a person to piss off — a fact that everyone at the company knew. In an organization full of swaggering men, she didn’t holler. She never pulled punches. She just told you what she thought of your boneheaded mistake and then moved on.

I admired her. I wanted to please her. They say that younger women evaluate their female elders both in terms of their achievements at work and the way they manage their lives at home, and I suppose the fact that my boss was also a mother and a wife (who left the office promptly at 6 p.m. no matter what little fires were erupting on deadline) appealed to me. But that wasn’t the first thing. The first thing was her relentlessness, her comfort with her own hunger, and the good humor with which she wore it all. It was she, more than anyone I’d ever met, who gave me the gift of a vision of a future in which I might be sustained by work, comfortable (if often extremely frustrated) competing with men, in an office full of impatient, profane, curious, demanding, creative people whose company I loved. Love.”

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The Costs of Womanhood

From Medium authored by Tony Deller:

“When I was watching my wife paint the finger and toenails of my 3 girls this past Sunday (60 nails in all), I found myself thinking about just how much women must need to “invest” in simply doing all of the stuff that comes along with being a woman. Sure, any woman can choose not to do some of that stuff, like those nails, and many do, but most do not. Most women in the world, from their first steps, are faced with a massive list of things that they “need” and “need to do” for most of the rest of their lives that the majority of men don’t have to worry about.

Take those nails, for instance. A tiny bottle of nail polish runs, say, $8, and can let a women do her nails maybe 20 or 30 times. But you need a dozen colors of polish, and some get misplaced or given to friends to borrow, or your kids dump them out on the carpet or use them to paint a school project. So call that $100/year on polish at home. And you need all of the other accoutrements for doing at-home nails, like nail polish remover and Q-tips. And those foam toe-separator things. But most women probably also get professional manicures and pedicures done, at least once a season, which is easily another $100 a year. $200/year for, what, 60 years?

$12,000 in a lifetime for nails, and that’s on the low end.

This article in People concludes that women spend about $15,000 on makeup over the course of their lives.

I was also a little shocked when I saw that a study conducted by Groupon found that women and up spending roughly $225,000 over a lifetime on their appearance, versus men’s $175,000:

I discovered a term in my research that I think I heard before, but forgot about. It’s the “pink tax”: Extra money companies charge women for items that both men and women use in some form or another.”

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The Most Viral Teaching Moments Of 2018

From NPR authored by Anya Kamenetz:

“In 2018, teachers and students used social media to let the world in. Viral posts shared moments of joy, laughter and even anger. Educators responded to the news — and sometimes they made news.

We’ve been gathering up the most notable of those school-related viral moments of the year — our roundup is below.

(A quick caution: While we’ve done what we could to check them out, these stories are presented with the caveat that it’s not always possible to know the full background behind every post shared on social media. The recent New York Times expose of a school in Louisiana is an example. That school got famous because of feel-good videos showing students getting into colleges like Harvard; the reality was far darker.)”

 

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This Is What ‘Self-Care’ REALLY Means, Because It’s Not All Salt Baths And Chocolate Cake

From Thought Catalog authored by Brianna Wiest:

“Self-care is often a very unbeautiful thing.

It is making a spreadsheet of your debt and enforcing a morning routine and cooking yourself healthy meals and no longer just running from your problems and calling the distraction a solution.

It is often doing the ugliest thing that you have to do, like sweat through another workout or tell a toxic friend you don’t want to see them anymore or get a second job so you can have a savings account or figure out a way to accept yourself so that you’re not constantly exhausted from trying to be everything, all the time and then needing to take deliberate, mandated breaks from living to do basic things like drop some oil into a bath and read Marie Claire and turn your phone off for the day.

A world in which self-care has to be such a trendy topic is a world that is sick. Self-care should not be something we resort to because we are so absolutely exhausted that we need some reprieve from our own relentless internal pressure.

True self-care is not salt baths and chocolate cake, it is making the choice to build a life you don’t need to regularly escape from.

And that often takes doing the thing you least want to do.”

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