The Emilie Loring Collection

Greetings from Wisconsin, where spring still has a ways to go!

As expected, it’s been a busy time here, getting my mom settled back into her lake house (“ice” house at the moment!)

In this last hour or two of Women’s History Month, I want to express appreciation for some of this year’s featured women:

“…women, past and present, who have been active in all forms of media and storytelling including print, radio, TV, stage, screen, blogs, podcasts, and more. The timely theme honors women in every community who have devoted their lives and talents to producing art, pursuing truth, and reflecting the human condition decade after decade.”

National Women’s History Alliance

Of course, we do that every month here on The Emilie Loring Collection, where we recognize Emilie Loring, whose thirty novels provide a thirty-year look at early twentieth century America.

Today, I also recognize two of her writing friends: Sara Ware Bassett, who wrote Cape Cod places and characters so real that people came to the Cape looking for her fictional “Belleport;”

and Clara Endicott Sears, who preserved stories of the Shakers, Transcendentalists, and Native Americans who once lived on her land.

I think of Blue Hill’s Esther Wood, who worked as a maid when she was a teenager, then attended Colby College and Radcliffe and became a professor of history at the University of Southern Maine. Like Sara Ware Bassett, who wanted to preserve Cape Cod life in writing, Esther wrote of her simple, country upbringing, first for the newspapers and then in books.

Through the Biographers International Organization, I’ve met these present-day storytellers who work years to research their subjects and write their stories.

Raquel Ramsey, who wrote the intrepid story of her sister-in-law, Nadine Ramsey, “a girl from Depression-era Kansas who overcame tremendous challenges and defied convention to become an elite pilot—one of the few American women to fly fighter aircraft during World War II.”

Bernice Lerner, who wrote of her mother’s suffering, survival, and final liberation from the Nazi concentration camp Bergen-Belsen and the staunch efforts of the British doctor who made that possible;

Melinda Ponder, who told the story of Katherine Lee Bates, the author of “America the Beautiful;”

Kathleen Stone, whose multiple biography, They Called Us Girls, chronicles the ambitious achievements of women in the post-WWII years when the pressure of “Women belong in the home” was especially strong;

Martha Wolfe, whose story of The Great Hound Match of 1905 is as much a hunt for respect as it is of foxes;

Iris Jamahl Dunkle, who wrote the story of Charmian Kittredge London, who was definitely not just Jack London’s wife;

and Carol DeBoer-Langworthy, who edited Neith Boyce’s autobiography and is now working on a full-blown literary biography of this author/playwright who was a contemporary of Emilie Loring.

I find myself in very good company, indeed.

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Next up: Come one, come all!

Happy Landings, Everyone!