7/25/12

Thank You, Sally Ride.

Sally Ride's spaceflight was one giant leap for womankind


By Patt Morrison

July 24, 2012, 11:07 a.m.

Sally Ride was not just along for the ride.

The first American woman in space, who died Monday at age 61 of pancreatic cancer, earned her seat in the astronaut program, and on the space shuttle. Sally Kristen Ride was an astrophysics PhD from Stanford. She went aloft 20 years after the Soviets earned bragging rights for putting the first woman into space, a onetime textile worker, Valentina Tereshkova, launched in June 1963 as a space-race PR stunt.

Sally Ride was the real deal, a scientist with major chops, when she stepped -- or was nudged -- onto the national stage in 1978, as one of the first group of women destined for the astronaut corps.

Women as varied as feminist leader Gloria Steinem and right-wing stalwart Phyllis Schlafly had words of praise for Ride, and by the time Ride went into space in 1983, every woman I knew was thrilled at the prospect of her joining the "right stuff" brigade. People cranked up "Mustang Sally" and sang along with special gusto to "Ride, Sally, ride!"

It was an impressive decade of firsts for women. In 1984, a year after Ride went into space, former Democratic Vice President Walter Mondale made Geraldine Ferraro the first woman on a major-party ticket, as his own vice presidential nominee. That didn’t work out so great for the Democrats, but it whacked another glass ceiling.

As with the women-in-space program, not everyone knew how to handle the Ferraro candidacy. Republican vice presidential candidate George H.W. Bush’s wife, Barbara, the future first lady, described Ferraro as a "$4-million -- I can’t say it, but it rhymes with rich," and no one believed her when she explained that she was thinking of the world "witch." Barbara Bush apologized, but a few days later, Bush’s press secretary referred to Ferraro as "bitchy," and did not.

Ride was not girly enough or self-revelatory enough for some reporters, nor did she seem to give two hoots what that cadre thought of her. She wore trousers when she got married to a fellow astronaut in 1982. (They divorced, and Ride spent more than a quarter-century with her partner, Tam O’Shaughnessey.) As she told the "Today"’ show a month before her shuttle trip, "There are aspects of being the first woman in space that I’m not going to enjoy," and the media attention was a big piece of that.

In the testosterone jockosphere that was the astronaut corps and its predecessor, the test-pilot corps, some men in the press pool and in the space program were floundering for the right words to describe the female right stuff, and they sometimes fell back on language that sounded more 1950s than 1970s and '80s.

"There are," Ride acknowledged, "people within NASA who need convincing." She would have been much happier, I suspect, in the present day, when the presence of women in NASA is no big deal and every girl can dream of a career in science or technology or aerospace without being scoffed at and told, "Girls can’t do that." But she had a big hand in making the extraordinary -- a female astronaut -- routine.

When Ride was among the six women first named to the potential astronaut pool in 1978, a Washington Post reporter described one of the other women as "petite and blond."

Johnson Space Center Director Christopher Kraft had introduced the women as part of a larger training group (one that included African Americans) as "a great bunch of guys … well, girls are called guys these days." Shuttle commander Robert Crippen later introduced his crew and playfully called Ride "undoubtedly the prettiest member of the flight crew."

One reporter even asked her whether she cried under stress.

Really. Word.

I was actually pleasantly surprised not to run across a story recounting how one of them had asked her whether she became irrational during her periods.

When Neil Armstrong’s was the first human foot to be set upon the moon, Armstrong said (don't go emailing me to niggle over this; the transmission from the moon evidently dropped the article "a") he was making "one small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind." That was 14 years before Ride went into space; today, the script would surely read "one small step for a human; one giant leap for humankind."

Ride, an Encino native who later lived in La Jolla, went on to advise NASA. She pioneered science education for girls and boys and wrote children's science books.

She also served on the commission investigating the Challenger explosion. And when I heard of Ride’s death, I remembered the poem "High Flight" that President Reagan quoted about the disaster.

It was written by John Magee Jr., a World War II pilot who had been born to missionaries, an American father and a British mother. He joined the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1940, and was killed a few days after Pearl Harbor, in a midair collision with another Allied plane over Britain. He was 19 years old.

Magee wrote the poem not as a funerary tribute but as a celebration of the thrill of untrammeled flight, and the poem became beloved of pilots and astronauts. It reads, in part,

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;


Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

of sun-split clouds -- and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of …

High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,

I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air....

And, while with silent lifting mind I have trod

The high untrespassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.


Sally Ride was a 10-year-old tennis buff in Encino in February 1962 when John Glenn, one of the original seven Mercury astronauts, sat a few seconds away from the launch that would make him the first American to orbit the planet. His colleague Scott Carpenter sent Glenn off to his first departure from Earth with a word that befits Sally Ride's last one: Godspeed.









Event of Interest: Women & Power Conference

I recently came across the "Women & Power Conference" that is being held September 21 - 23 in Rhinebeck, NY. There is a  scholorship offered, due 8/1. Check out the website for more conference details and for information on other workshops the Omega Center offeres througout the year. A description of the conference is below.

At this year’s Women & Power conference, creative and courageous women are brought together to inspire you to plot your own breakthrough path—one of change, growth, and innovation—at home, at work, and in the world.

The conference is an exploration and celebration of what is possible when women trust their inventiveness to solve some of humanity’s most pressing problems. In keynotes, panels, conversations, and breakout workshops, we hear from women who are using their power and passion to make real change. Prepare to be inspired to make a difference in your own corner of the world.
Scholarships are available; please apply by August 1, 2012. 

Conference Highlights
  • Listen to and engage in conversations about women using power differently in many spheres, including the economy, media, arts, religion, environment, and activism.
  • Learn from global panels featuring emerging leaders from South and North Korea, Nigeria, South Africa, the Middle East, Afghanistan, and more
  • Enjoy performances, including dance, drumming, spoken word, and a special guest performer on Saturday evening
  • Go inward with optional classes in yoga and meditation
  • Meet new friends and colleagues

Featuring

Isabel Allende, Michele Bertran, Jennifer Buffett, Majora Carter, Joan Chittister, Eve Ensler, Sally Field, Khadijah Hawaja Gambo, Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, Carla Goldstein, Ubaka Hill, Esther Ibanga, Chung Hyun Kyung, Elizabeth Lesser, Pat Mitchell, Kelly Morris, Hibaaq Osman, Sarah Peter, Cecile Richards, Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, Edit Schlaffer, Gail Straub, Manisha Thakor, Halla Tomasdottir, Loung Ung, and Ann Veneman

7/19/12

Rape Jokes Are Funny?

Louis C.K. on Daniel Tosh’s Rape Joke: Are Comedy and Feminism Enemies?


By Jennifer Pozner for The Daily Beast
Is comedy under attack by an army of pink-fatigued feminists?


You might think so if you watched Louis C.K. on The Daily Show Monday night, addressing criticism he has received for supportively tweeting Daniel Tosh, who was under fire for asking a comedy club audience “Wouldn’t it be funny if that girl got raped by like, five guys right now… like right now?” in response to a female heckler. C.K., the star of Louie on FX, explained that he sent the tweet while on vacation and hadn’t heard about the controversy over Tosh’s retort, which many interpreted as a tacit threat of gang rape. After news outlets, entertainment journalists, and bloggers reported on his tweet, he said, “I’ve been called a rape apologist because I said ‘Hi’ to a guy.”

C.K. told Jon Stewart the fierce debate that erupted online and in the press over Tosh’s comment was really just “a fight between comedians and feminists, which are natural enemies. Because stereotypically speaking, feminists can’t take a joke” and “comedians can’t take criticism.”

The hypersensitivity of comedians might help explain the many ugly tweets from comics telling Tosh that the heckler asked for it or, like Doug Stanhope, using hashtags like #FuckThatPig. But the idea that comedians and feminists are “natural enemies” is faulty logic, a cliché so tired, it’s beneath the usual creativity of C.K., recently called “The World’s Greatest Comedian” by Entertainment Weekly. (Besides, joke thieves who crib other comics’ material are the real enemies of comedy—them, or owners of brick-walled basement clubs who pay comedians only in beer.)

Last week, in response to similar complaints about those Oh-So-Unfunny feminists, I collaborated on a video that clarified the difference between “rape jokes” that target victims and mock their pain, and “rape culture jokes” that dismantle the systems that protect rapists and blame women for sexual assault. “Rape Joke Supercut: I Can’t Believe You Clapped For That,” a 90-second video by remix artist Elisa Kreisinger in collaboration with Women In Media & News (the organization I direct), Women’s Media Center and Fem 2.0, uses clips from Wanda Sykes, Daniel Tosh, Louis C.K., and various other comedians to point out that humor works best when it exposes injustice, not perpetuates it:


I’m a media critic, and in an amusing bit of comic timing, just seven hours before The Daily Show aired C.K.’s “natural enemies” quip I published an article debunking the “Feminists Versus Comedians” frame that media and comics have used to describe the Tosh controversy. Despite much proof to the contrary, I wrote, feminists are not claiming that “rape jokes are never funny.” Just as George Carlin proved they can be decades ago, so did feminist writers Kate Harding and Lindy West last week, with posts listing numerous comics who’ve gotten it right. (Incidentally, I also quoted this Louis sketch as a case study in how to eviscerate a heckler—without resorting to thinly-veiled threats of violence.)

To his credit, C.K. said he learned a lot about the chilling effects of rape culture from his “natural enemies” this week. “I’ve read some blogs during this whole thing that have made me enlightened to things I didn’t know. This woman said how rape is something that polices women’s lives. They have a narrow corridor. They can’t go out late, they can’t go to certain neighborhoods, they can’t get a certain way, because they might get—That’s part of me now that wasn’t before,” he told Stewart, “and I can still enjoy a good rape joke.”

Emphasis on “good.” Feminists aren’t against good comedy—they’re just against lazy hacks. As the late bawdy Texan journalist Molly Ivins, a feminist known for her wicked sense of humor, said, “Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful. I only aim at the powerful. When satire is aimed at the powerless, it is not only cruel—it’s vulgar.” Rape, like every other subject, can be the stuff of brilliant comedy; George Carlin proved as much in this master class example.


A large and loud percentage of The Daily Show’s audience booed when C.K. said feminists can’t take a joke. A good sign, considering that young men typically fill the majority of seats in Jon Stewart’s studio. Another good sign? Many comedians have rejected the bro code and pushed back against resorting to bottom-feeder rape punch lines for cheap laughs.

Continue reading, here.

7/18/12

June Activist of the Month

Congratulations Elizabeth Duarte!

For the month of June CT NOW choose to recognize the hard work of Elizabeth Durate, because of her commitment  to advancing womens issues and her role in the political arena as president of the Connecticut Federation of the Democratic Women, as well as encouraging others to take an active role.

Most recently she organized a workshop in Middletown that focused on the war on women. It afforded an opportunity to not only discuss the issues happening at the national level, but also for women in local communities to come together and discuss the impact on their daily lives.

Congratulations Elizabeth!

7/17/12

How Much is Enough?

Retirement seems like a far distant idea at this point in my life. Most mornings I'm more concerned with Hartford traffic or figuring out how I can squeeze a grocery run in during my lunch break, rather than my financial stability 40 years from now. However it seems that NOW is the time that I should be taking steps to investigate just what goes into this mythical idea of retirement. Should I be saving now?  Where do I begin? How much should I be saving?

As these questions, and others, begin to race through your brain don't panic! As the second part of our Empowerment Series, CT NOW is offering a free educational seminar about this very topic, retirement planning! Please join us Tuesday July 24th from 6-8pm at the West Hartford Town Hall!! Bring your questions and a friend, I know sessions like these are always best if followed by a glass of wine and someone to chat with!

For more information on how to RSVP Click Here

7/12/12

There's a New Super PAC in Town

LPAC, Lesbian Super PAC, Launches With Backing Of Billie Jean King And Jane Lynch

Posted: Updated: 07/11/2012 9:55 am
By Amanda Terkel, aterkel@huffingtonpost.com

WASHINGTON -- Women including sports icon Billie Jean King and actress Jane Lynch are starting a super PAC on Wednesday that they hope will increase the political power of the lesbian community.

The organization, called LPAC, will provide financial backing to pro-lesbian candidates, whether Democrats or Republicans, male or female, gay or straight. The group intends to back federal and state candidates, as well as some ballot measures. All targets of the group's support must back an end to discrimination for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals; reproductive rights and access to quality health care; and social, racial and economic justice.

Group members said they have pledges of $200,000 and hope to raise at least $1 million for the 2012 elections. High-profile supporters include King, Lynch, Chicago Cubs co-owner Laura Ricketts and LGBT leader Urvashi Vaid.

"Members of the LGBT community are inspirational leaders and role models in every aspect of American life -- from education to entertainment, from sports to science,” said King in a statement. "The formation of LPAC provides lesbians and the entire LGBT community a new, stronger voice and a real and respected seat at the table when politicians make policy that impacts our lives."

Laura Ricketts is the daughter of Joe Ricketts, a Republican businessman who has donated large sums to an anti-Obama super PAC. His daughter, however, is a major donor to the president.

While there are already women's and LGBT groups -- such as EMILY's List and the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund -- LPAC bills itself as the first super PAC to specifically target lesbians, who are generally a small subset of these two communities.

"Women's voices get lost a lot and get overshadowed in almost all settings," said Sarah Schmidt, LPAC's spokeswoman, in an interview with The Huffington Post. "So I think there's a real opportunity here to engage women who haven't been engaged before -- for lesbians, in particular, to speak for ourselves about the issues that are important to us and to define those issues in our own words. It's a chance to really have a seat at the table when these critical issues are being discussed and the policy is being developed. We want to be there. We want to be in the middle of the conversation."

Schmidt said the super PAC hasn't determined which candidates it will endorse. Some, she said, seem like obvious choices, including Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), the only lesbian in the House who would become the first openly gay person in the Senate if elected.

When asked if she believed any Republicans would be included in this group, Schmidt said she was doubtful.
"Part of the reason why we're mobilizing right now is because of what's been going on in the political conversation and what we've been hearing coming from the Republican Party around these issues that's been so disheartening," Schmidt said. "We would really hope that we can find some Republican candidates to support. I'm not sure that's going to happen this cycle.

Beyond simply supporting pro-lesbian candidates, LPAC aims to build a network of women who stay involved after the election.

"We hope that that engagement with one another really helps us to have a more powerful voice in the conversation around these issues as we move forward," said Schmidt. "I think that makes this PAC a little bit different than many."

7/11/12

Gates Foundation to Pledge Funds for Contraception

http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/features/gates-foundation-to-pledge-funds-for-contraception_728573.html

Exciting article about the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation pledging hundreds of millions of dollars to fund access to contreception in developing countries.

he Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is set to unveil funding a sum in the hundreds of millions of dollars for a campaign to improve access to contraception in the developing world.

The exact amount will be announced at a summit of world leaders and aid organisations in London on Wednesday, but in an interview with Reuters, Melinda Gates said the commitment would be "on a par" with the foundation's other big programmes, like that against malaria, AIDS and tuberculosis.

In January, the foundation pledged a further USD 750 million for that fight on top of USD 650 million contributed since the fund was set up 10 years ago.

The aim of the London Summit on Family Planning is to raise USD 4 billion to expand access to contraception for 120 million women in the developing world by 2020.

According to United Nations figures, about 220 million women in the developing world who do not want to get pregnant, cannot get reliable access to contraception.

"Because we didn't have contraception or family planning on the agenda we weren't putting new money into it," says Gates. "We weren't saying this is a priority. So this is our moment in time to say this is a priority and we need to fund it."

Money is not the only barrier. Controlling population growth has fallen off the development agenda, rendered controversial for decades by coercive programmes like forced sterilisation in India in the 1970s and China's one-child policy.

It still provokes controversy, not least in the United States where Gates has been criticised by Catholic groups which tend to see contraception and abortion as part of the same issue.

"It's far less controversial than people make it," says Gates, citing a Gallup poll three months ago in the United |States. "Top of the poll was: 90% of Americans think contraceptives are morally acceptable. 82% of Catholics think contraceptives are morally acceptable. To me that's not controversial.

"It's when you start to broaden the agenda that you find the controversy," she adds.

CULTURAL HURDLES

But there are major cultural barriers in some developing countries to limiting family size.

Goodluck Jonathan, president of Africa's most populous country Nigeria, has backed greater use of birth control to head off a population boom that the United Nations forecasts will see the nation grow to 400 million people by 2050 from 160 million.

But he acknowledges the scale of the challenge. At the end of June he was quoted by the BBC as saying: "Both Christians and Muslims, and even traditionalist and other religions, believe that children are God's gifts to man".

The Nigerian government is backing an information campaign on birth control and has not ruled out legislation.

But Gates and development agencies agree that making contraception available on a voluntary basis is crucial, and will be enough to bring major economic, health and environmental benefits.

This week, the medical journal The Lancet published a series of studies that underpin the campaign.

One said that satisfying the unmet demand for contraception among women who want to limit or space their pregnancies could reduce maternal deaths by 30%, saving about 104,000 lives a year caused by complications linked to pregnancy and childbirth.

Better access to contraception would cut unsafe abortions, estimated to account for 13% of maternal deaths in the developing world. First pregnancies for very young women and those that are spaced too closely also carry a heightened risk, the study said.

An environmental study estimated that, if the UN's highest predictions of population growth prove correct, there will be a 60% rise in carbon dioxide emissions from energy use.

An economic analysis in the same series, based on research in Bangladesh and Ghana, found that making contraception widely available increased female participation in the work force, lifted women's earnings and enhanced overall economic growth.

DOSE OF REALISM

The majority of the funding for the campaign will not come from the Gates Foundation, but Melinda Gates believes the countries in greatest need of better family planning have both the means and the political will.

"There are at least six African countries today that are having large economic growth... Even a place like Ethiopia, it's growing so, as its economy grows, it can start to put more money into health."

The foundation can be a "catalytic wedge", taking some risk out of the equation and bringing some innovation, she says. "The causes we have picked around the world are so enormous that they take governments to come in and really fund them at large scale."

But why, given the Gates' reputation for setting ambitious targets for the eradication of some of the world's biggest health threats, is the target not to meet the unmet contraceptive needs of the whole 220 million women?

"I think it's really important, particularly in global health, to have ambitious goals but also realistic goals," says Gates. "Even meeting 120 million is going to be tough for us."

7/10/12

Seeing Nora Everywhere It Seems

The month of June was a blur for me, I distinctly remember Memorial Day and then woke up on the 4th of July wondering how the time flies! I am thrilled that things have slowed down and even more excited to begin blogging again , boy how I have missed sharing my favorite articles with everyone!

This past weekend I came across a beautiful article that highlighted one womans tale of how another woman transformed her life, taught her compassion and more importantly inspired her to be a better person. Even though these are not your everyday women, the author Lena Dunham, creator and and star of the hit show Girls, which I LOVE, and her sage Nora Ephron, the one and only, their relationship reminded me of my own close friendships. I couldn't wipe the smile from my face as I read this piece.

Very rarely do articles highlight the positive relationships women have with each other, and this article did just that. While I am grieving for Lena and her horrible loss, I felt she did an amazing job explaining just wonderful a person and friend Nora was.

I hope you enjoy the below article as much as I did, happy reading!

Seeing Nora Everywhere

The New Yorker

nora-ephron-photo.jpg
“This Is My Life” is the movie that made me want to make movies. I first saw it in second grade, so I wouldn’t have articulated it as such, but that’s what was going on. I must have watched it on VHS eleven or twelve times in one summer, trying hard to grasp something. About its characters? About its construction? On each viewing, a new joke or angle revealed itself to me and its world became richer. I loved Samantha Mathis’s surly teen, Gaby Hoffmann’s quippy innocent, and especially Julie Kavner’s Dot, their single mother, a standup comedian hellbent on self-actualizing despite, or maybe because of, these daughters. But what I really loved was the person orchestrating the whole thing. The costumes, perfectly low-rent polka-dotted blazers and grungy winter hats. The music, a mixture of vaudevillian bounce and Carly Simon’s voice that somehow made the city seem more real than if car horns scored the film. The camerawork, a single gliding shot that followed each family member into her bedroom as she settled into a new apartment in a less than desirable Manhattan neighborhood. I loved whoever was making these actresses comfortable enough to express the minutiae of being a human woman onscreen.

It wasn’t until years later that I understood this was Nora Ephron. I devoured her prose, her other film offerings, and became a fangirl right along with my mother, aunt, grandmother, and every other intelligent woman in the tristate area. Which is why it was so momentous when, in March of 2011, I received a short, perfect e-mail from Ephron, saying she had seen and enjoyed my film and would like to take me to lunch.
I was twenty minutes early, and hid in a corner until I saw Nora enter, greet the hostess, and be shown to the best table in the place. I watched her order a Diet Coke and check her iPhone, and then I finally appeared at the table, already regretting my choice of top. But when she looked up, my fears evaporated. I was just so excited to know her.

Over the course of our year-and-a-half-long friendship, Nora introduced me to, in no particular order: several ear, nose, and throat doctors; the Patagonia jackets she favored when on set because they were “thinner than a sweater but warmer than a parka”; ordering multiple desserts and having small, reasonable bites of all of them (I thought, Oh, so this is what ladies do); the photography of Julius Shulman; the concept of eating lunch at Barneys; self-respect; the complex legend of Helen Gurley Brown; the Jell-O mold; her beloved sister Delia. She explained how to interact with a film composer (“Just say what you’re hearing and what you want to hear”) and what to do if someone screamed at you on the telephone (“Just nod, hang up, and decide you will never allow anyone to speak to you that way again”). She called bullshit on a whole host of things, too: donuts served in fancy restaurants; photo shoots in which female directors are asked to all stand in a cluster wearing mustaches; the idea that one’s writing isn’t fiction if it borrows from one’s life.
Her advice was unparalleled. At one of our lunches this past January, I was sheepishly describing a male companion’s lack of support for my professional endeavors. She nodded in a very “don’t be stupid” way, as if I already knew what I had to do: “You can’t possibly meet someone right now. When I met Nick, I was already totally notorious”—note: Nora was the only person who could make that word sound neither braggy nor sinister—“and he understood exactly what he was getting into. You can’t meet someone until you’ve become what you’re becoming.” Panicked, I asked, “How long will that take?”
Nora considered a moment. “Give it six months.”

I loved her propensity for asking a question when she already knew the correct answer but wanted to let you make a tiny fool of yourself. The best example of this was when we were discussing a popular book and she earnestly asked, “Did you think that was a good book?” I said, “Well, yes,” before Nora came back, sharply, with “It wasn’t.” I later told this story onstage with her, and she laughed as though she knew it was one of her most awesome tricks.

When I brought horribly failed brownies that no one ate to her family Thanksgiving, she didn’t try to placate me, but, rather, said, “I feel that these brownies are destined for a moment in the second season of your show.” (At this point, there hadn’t even been a first.)

After that Thanksgiving—an incredibly lovely evening spent in her home in Los Angeles, watching her beautiful interactions with Nick and Jacob and Max, and tasting a turkey she’d made that even she had to admit was perfect—I went home and likely offended my own mother by announcing that “it was with the kind of family I was meant to have.” From an outsider’s perspective (and I was one of many orphans stranded in L.A. that she let in from the hot), there was a generosity of spirit and a sparkle of frank wit that I’d heretofore only seen in Nora Ephron movies. We discussed current events and played running charades. Nora went around the table asking if any of us would ever kiss a Republican.

The last time I saw her was in April, for a screening of “This Is My Life” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music with Delia and the writer Meg Wolitzer, whose book the movie was based on. We did a long Q. & A. in which Nora was so generous with an audience of hungry young people that I still get thankful e-mails about it. She discussed directing for the first time, learning to shot-list and talk to a crew. The idea that it had taken her a moment to settle into filmmaking was so deeply comforting. Women asked her openly for life advice, their voices tinged with panic. She explained that being a working mother will never be balanced, so we just need to get over that and try to do the best we can. She explained that you cannot wait around for someone to give you permission to tell your stories. She also gleefully name-checked five or six people she hated in the movie business but asked that the audience please not tweet it (they listened), and said that she was the only woman in Hollywood who had not slept with Sven Nykvist.

Her relationship to “women in film” questions and debates has fully dictated my response: a mix of a raised brow—“Do we really need to go over this again?”—and an understanding that sexism isn’t gone, and that we have to engage in the debate a bit, even when it frustrates us. Still, I’m in awe of her square refusal to be pegged as a woman writer. The gender- and women’s-studies student in me wants to write a thesis on Nora’s contributions, but the Nora devotee simply wants to render her in the type of smart, deceptively basic details that were the trademark of her work.

That night in Brooklyn, she had chosen not to watch her first movie, and so, while it screened, we ate dinner. She tried to order salad, and the restaurant, a hipster farm-to-fork place, said it wasn’t in season and therefore they couldn’t serve it. Nora: “How totally bold.” Later, a pasta came with greens atop it. “O.K., that’s salad.”

After the Q. & A., “This Is My Life” was playing again, on a new print. “Let’s just stay for five minutes,” Nora said, “to see how the print is.” Five turned into ten turned into forty, and Delia and Meg and Nora and I were utterly with the film, comprising almost the whole audience (the first showing had been sold out, but this one promised no Q. & A., and was dead). A few times I pinched myself—getting to watch Nora watch—but mostly I savored my first favorite movie. As a second-grade fan, I didn’t understand that the film hadn’t been a hit, but, despite some glowing reviews, this fact had in some way hindered Nora’s appreciation of her first movie. Twenty years later, she seemed to be reclaiming it, humbly but joyfully. “I watched it on VHS this weekend,” she had told me earlier, “and I actually thought it was pretty good.”
That first time we had lunch, I told Nora that I still lived with my parents in a small windowless back room downtown. Her reaction was slightly amused and appropriately appalled. It was only after reading her essay about starting her life over again as a single mother in the Apthorp that I decided I might be capable of living alone. As I hunted for a place, I tried to use Nora-esque criteria—prewar details, an open courtyard, an eccentric building staff, and neighbors who appeared to dabble in the occult, at least enough for a good story. When I finally found my place I waffled, but when I described it to Nora, she said, “Perfect. You’ll never regret it.”

When I still hadn’t moved three months after taking ownership of the apartment, Nora insisted that I use her contractor, who fixed my little home up in a manner she would have approved of. She had advice about good white paint and how to handle old tile. I told her it was my Apthorp, whatever that means. The first night in my new home I read “Scribble Scribble” by the light of my one lamp. The cover is Nora, all lean shoulders and cap of bobbed hair, looking moody but impish.

This past week, the elevator in my new building both flooded and caught on fire, so an extra doorman had to be hired to carry elderly women up the stairs. I think Nora would find this funny and strange and awful. Every sweaty step I take to get to the sixth floor I hear her name like a mantra.

When searching my inbox last night for an e-mail from Nora, to get the specifics of her phrasing, I came upon this sign-off to a short but sweet one thanking me for lunch: “see you somewhere… xox.” Somewhere, it turns out, is everywhere. I see Nora in the home I wouldn’t live in if not for her, the shot list I make in the van to set in the morning, and the jacket I slip into when the sun comes down (she always sent links along with tips). I see her when the craft services on set isn’t up to par, or in the process of getting to know a man who seems to understand. I see her in the worst hair moments and the best soup moments. I know I am only one of hundreds of women, people, who will miss Nora’s company, and millions who will miss her voice. The opportunity to be friends with Nora in the last year of her life informs the entirety of mine. I am so grateful.

Photograph by Linda Nylind/Eyevine.


Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/06/lena-dunham-remembers-nora-ephron.html#ixzz20DwxP2Z2