snowynight

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Self care isn't a luxury. It's an act of self preservation and let us continue to persist and care for others in this world.

Perhaps the World Ends Here by Joy Harjo

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During the World War II, many women became secret agents operated in Nazis occupied Europe to "set Europe ablaze".
Here are some examples.

Odette (Marie Céline Hallowes): Special Operations Executive (SOE) agent in WWII. She was sent to be a courier for the Résistance in occupied France. In 1943, she was arrested, tortured by the Gestapo and sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp. She survived and testified against the camp staff at the Nuremburg trials. After WWII, Odette was dedicated to preserve the memory of her fellow female agents that sacrificed themselves during the war.

Elaine Madden: one of the two female SOE agents to parachute into the Nazis-occupied Belgium. After SOE, Elaine volunteered for the Special Allied Airborne Reconnaissance Force (SAARF) to find surviving SOE agents, Belgian political prisoners and resistance workers in Nazis concentration camps.

Krystyna Skarbek (Christine Granville) : Polish aristocrat who volunteered herself as a British secret agent going on undercover missions in Nazis-occupied Europe. Churchill called her "my favourite spy" because she obtained evidence of German invasion of the Soviet Union when the two countries supposedly agreed to a non-aggression pact. Once she escaped a German offensive by hiking almost 70 miles

Hannah Szenes (Senesh): She was a Jewish poet immigrated to Palestine in 1939. Four years later, she was recruited for a paratrooper spy mission. In 1944, she was parachuted by the RAF into occupied Hungary. Caught at the border, she was tortured but remained silence. Given the chance to beg for a pardon in November 1944, Szenes chose death by firing squad.

Josephine Baker: African American dancer, singer, actress, and civil rights activist, Josephine found fame and a home in France. She was "the star France wanted, and the spy France needed". During WWII, she joined the French Resistance and used her celebrity status to smuggle messages in her lyrics that were sent back to France. She was also the only female speaker at the March on Washington in 1968, where she honored women civil rights activists.

Alime Abdenanova: a Crimean Tatar scout in the Red Army during World War II. After German occupation of Crimea in 1943, she led her reconnaissance group to collect intelligence about the positions of German and Romanian troops. She was arrested, tortured and executed in 1944. When Stalin deported Crimean Tatars from their homeland, her surviving family members were all deported to Uzbekistan.

Further reading about female spies

The Spy Museum has an exhibition called "This Sisterhood of Spies", which celebrates the women "using everything in their power to gain information, and risking it all for a cause they believed in."

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Day 2 - Changes

Anna May Wong (1905-1961) was the first Chinese American film star in Hollywood and the first Asian American to become an international star. She started acting at 14, and made about 60 films in her career. Hailed as a fashion icon in 1920s and 1930s, she was a top billed player for over twenty years, working not only in Hollywood, but also in Austria, England, France and Germany. In 1922, at age 17, she became the first Chinese-American to break Hollywood's miscegenation rule playing opposite a white romantic lead in The Toll of the Sea. She was the first Asian-American actress to receive a star in the Hollywood Walk of Fame

( Movie Star from Silent Film to Television Era )


a photo of her from Stars of the Photoplay, 1930

Further reading

Wikipedia Page about Anna May Wong

The First Asian-American on US Currency: Who's Anna May Wong?

How film star Anna May Wong paved the way for Asian representation at the Oscars

Anna May Wong’s Lasting Legacy

Google Doodle celebrates Anna May Wong nearly 100 years after her first leading role. Here’s why she’s in focus

The Woman Suffrage Cookbook was one among many published between the 1880s and 1920 to advocate the cause of universal suffrage. They are weapons to popularize and defend their cause from the critics who screamed that suffragists have abandoned their household responsibilities so weren't worth listening to. Quite a number of recipes include their authors' names, so we can remember and celebrate these women' effort to fight for a more equal future.

The recipe of Suffrage Angel Cake came from Eliza Kennedy Smith, a 20th-century American suffragist, civic activist, and government reformer. She helped founded the Allegheny County Equal Rights Association and held the president position to her death. She also worked with her sister to uncover Pittsburgh city government corruption and led to the conviction of Mayor Charles H. Kline.

Suffrage Angel Cake
(a la Kennedy)

11 eggs
1 full cup Swansdown Flour (after sifting)
1½ cups granulated sugar
1 heaping teaspoon cream of tartar
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 pinch of salt

Beat the eggs until light—not stiff; sift sugar 7 times, add to eggs, beating as little as possible. Sift flour 9 times, using only the cupful, discarding the extra flour; then put in the flour the cream of tartar; add this to the eggs and sugar; now the vanilla. Put in angel cake pan with feet. Put in oven with very little heat. Great care must be used in baking this cake to insure success. Light the oven when you commence preparing material. After the first 10 minutes in oven, increase heat and continue to do so every five minutes until the last 4 or 5 minutes, when strong heat must be used. At thirty minutes remove cake and invert pan allowing to stand thus until cold.

Further Reading:
The Forgotten Cookbooks That Fueled Women’s Suffrage
Cook like a suffragette: fine dining from century-old political recipes
How Suffragists Used Cookbooks As A Recipe For Subversion

On 24 December 1971, Juliane Koepcke (aged 17) took LANSA Flight 508 with her mother from Lima to Pucallpa, Amazon forest. Her parents were both zoologists who worked in a research station there, and they wanted to spend Christmas together. The plane was struck by lightning mid-flight and began to disintegrate before plummeting to the ground. Still strapped to her seat, Koepcke fell 3,000 m (10,000 ft) into the Amazon rainforest.

She survived the crash with relatively minor injury (a broken collarbone, a deep cut in her right arm, an eye injury, and a concussion) and only woke up the next morning. For the following 11 days, she was stranded alone in the largest tropical rainforest on Earth.

He years in the research station taught her about jungle survival, but she still needed to face a lack of clean water and food, predators and maggot infection in her arm. "Sometimes I would see a crocodile on the bank and it would start into the water towards me, but I was not afraid. I knew crocodiles don't tend to attack humans," she said.

After 10 days, she found a local fisherman's encampment and gave herself rudimentary first aid, which included pouring gasoline on her arm to force the maggots out of the wound. The next day the fisherman discovered her and brought her to the next town. She was the sole survivor of the crash.

I remembered reading about her jungle survival in Reader's Digest, but didn't know what had happened to her afterwards. She returned to Peru and became a zoologist specialized in bats. In 2011, she published her memoir When I Fell From the Sky , which won that year's Corine Literature Prize.

Gundam Wing is my first introduction to the Gundam Franchise, in which a squadron of five giant robot pilots of a beleaguered Earth colony is sent to bring the war to their oppressive home planet. Relena is one of the main characters and my favourite.

At the beginning, Relena is the daughter of Darliano, the Vice Foreign Minister of the Alliance and peace advocate. She's lonely but leads a peaceful and sheltered life. Then her world gradually crumbles. Darliano is assassinated. Before his death, he tells her that she's actually the daughter of King Peacecraft, who dies upon the Alliance's attack of their country. Still a teenager, Relena now has to take the mantle of being the sovereign of the newly reestablished Sanc Kingdom.

Like her birth and adopted fathers, Relena is a pacifist and advocates peace between the Earth and the colonies. She holds on to her ideal in the face of attack of the Alliance, willingly surrenders to save her people . The Alliance wants to use her as a puppet, but they underestimates her. I really like the scene that during her captivity, she gives a public speech about pacifism. She sees Heero in the shadow and correctly guesses that he is coming to kill her for supposedly betraying her principle, but she says her last word and is ready for death.  It's inspiring to see how she grows from a sad rich teenaged girl to a charismatic and principled leader.

Florence Nightingale, OM, RRC was a social reformer, writer,  statistician and founder of modern nursing. She became famous while serving as a manager and trainer of nurses during the Crimean War. Bedridden for decades after her return, she adviced the government on army reform, sanitation in Britain and India, and hospital design.

Some of her writings: 

 

Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures in the 8th Grade is an all age limited series about Supergirl as a junior high superheroine. It's bright, colourful with good art. The story is fun, with a sense of wonder and wacky adventure. The characters are very lovable. 

Our titular superheroine Supergirl crashes on Earth (and lands on Lex Luthor) after arguing with parents and meets her cousin Superman for first time. Superman sends her to a junior high school to pass as a human, where she makes friends with Lena Luthor, the younger sister of Lex Luthor. 

The story is safe for children readers, but it appeals beyond that. Supergirl has to face cultural difference, bullying and difficulties with adapting to a new environment, but she remains optimistic and brave. Lena believes that aliens and superheroes are evil thanks to Lex. She is a weird mad scientist, but she's also loyal and willing to change. The enemies and adventure they face include aliens, time travel and clones, and of course saving the world. 

If It Please the Court is a Heart's Choice interactive lesbian romance novel where the player character is recruited from the slum to be a royal spy in eighteenth-century Versailles. There are three love interests: a spymistress, a poet lady-in-waiting, or a traitor to the king. 

I have to admit that I always pursue the route of the spymistress because I love her best. Charlotte is a competent and ambitious woman who seizes the chance to attempt to shape the politics of the country. She is smart and cautious, but I love how much she's willing to trust my player character when they're in love.

The other love interests are interesting too. Geneviève the poet lady-in-waiting is guarded, quiet but a very insightful friend. Katharina is a dangerous and ruthless enemy spy, but very seductive. In fact the game has very good writing and interesting characters. 

It can be played free with watching ads, so you can try and see if it's to your taste.