Category: History

Observing Women’s History Month

I haven’t made a Women’s History Month post in a while; it’s difficult to feel celebratory in the face of what both very bad men and women are doing in our names in the US these days. However, to make up for being remiss in re-recording history, please accept this post about Rose O’Neill. I first learned of her when my grandparents moved to Springfield, MO in 1970, and took us to her small museum at the small, then-non-commercial Shepherd Of The Hills area. (It was great back then!) I knew of Kewpies (I don’t care for the cutesiness, but they are art nonetheless,) but had no idea a woman created them, nor that she did so much art right in the area where we were then living. I began to be a fan, but sort of let it go as I got older. Below will be a PBS documentary that is excellent, and inspired me to make this post for March 21st. There is also some other info. Enjoy, and remember, we all have history, and it doesn’t go away just because someone makes it more difficult to find (yes, that is encouraging myself as well as readers who’ve made it this far!)

Here is a link with a snippet, about the museum now in Walnut Shade, MO. I bet all the things I remember will be there. Maybe I’ll make it over there and try again. It looks far less commercialized than Shepherd of the Hills last time I was there.

Rose O’Neill’s Bonniebrook

“I love this place better than anywhere on earth”
-Rose O’Neill about Bonniebrook

Bonniebrook is a historic home and museum located in Walnut Shade, Missouri, just a short drive from Branson. Our museum is dedicated to preserving the life and legacy of artist, writer, and activist Rose O’Neill, best known for her creation of the Kewpie dolls.

​Bonniebrook Museum features Rose’s original drawings, paintings, and sculptures, artifacts from the O’Neill home, a large collection of Kewpies and other characters, the O’Neill family cemetery, and much more!

​As one of the only art museums and historical homes in the Branson area, Bonniebrook is a must-see destination for those looking for things to do in Branson, Missouri and the surrounding areas. Come visit this well-preserved piece of history!


Mission Statement:
Bonniebrook Historical Society (BHS) was founded in 1975. Its purpose is to collect, preserve, and make available for educational and historical purposes artifacts, documents, personal items, and any work or items directly relating to the history and life of Rose O’Neill. In addition, BHS accumulates research, materials that document, authenticate, explain, and provide detailed information about the character, personality, and accomplishments of the talented and generous Rose O’Neill.

https://www.roseoneill.org/

And here is the documentary I watched yesterday and mentioned above. It’s very worthy of views!

You just grew up intolerant.

Nearly 4 in 10 U.S. Adults Think Homosexuality Is “Morally Unacceptable”

https://www.them.us/story/nearly-4-in-10-us-adults-think-homosexuality-is-morally-unacceptable

The U.S. placed ninth among 25 countries surveyed.
By Samantha Riedel

Image may contain Light Traffic Light Adult Person Sign and Symbol
Madrid traffic lights to promote gender equality and LGBT toleranceBen Vine

Thirty-nine percent of U.S. adults still believe homosexuality is “morally unacceptable,” according to a new report from the Pew Research Center published last week.

Pew researchers surveyed a representative sample of 3,605 adults in the U.S. last March, as part of a study about moral attitudes in 25 different countries, according to the report. Respondents were asked whether they believed certain behaviors — including homosexuality — were morally acceptable, unacceptable, or not a moral issue. (In U.S. surveys, the word “unacceptable” was changed to “wrong.”)

Within the U.S. sample, 39% viewed being gay as morally wrong. That placed the U.S. ninth among all countries surveyed by rate of anti-gay sentiment, between Israel (47%) and Hungary (34%). There was a slight net shift upward compared to Pew research from 2013, which found 37% of adults in the U.S. believed homosexuality was immoral.

Researchers did find significant differences in opinion between demographics, however. Sixty-two percent of U.S. women said it was acceptable or not a moral issue to be gay, compared to 56% of men. Disapproval also skewed older, with 43% of U.S. adults 40 years old or older saying homosexuality was unacceptable, compared to 33% of those aged 18-39. People with lower levels of formal education were also more likely to disapprove of all the behaviors surveyed, which included getting an abortion, gambling, and watching pornography.

The largest gaps in acceptance appeared to be based on religiosity. Fifty-eight percent of U.S. adults who said they pray daily disapproved of being gay, compared to just 24% of those who said they pray less often or not at all. That was especially true for Christians, who were “often among the most likely to consider each of the nine behaviors to be morally unacceptable,” researchers noted. In Nigeria, one of several African nations where U.S. evangelical groups have heavily influenced anti-gay laws and public opinion over the past two decades, 96% of respondents said being gay was immoral. (The most gay-accepting countries of the 25 surveyed were Germany and Sweden, where only 5% said homosexuality was unacceptable.)

A demonstrator is arrested after blocking a road with a group in front of the Supreme Court during a rally for gender-affirming care in Washington, D.C. on June 20, 2025. The Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 decision in the case of U.S. v. Skrmetti that Tennessee's SB1 ban, which bars puberty blockers and hormone therapies for transgender minors, does not violate the US Constitution and can remain in effect.
Moms Are Risking Arrest to Protect Gender-Affirming Care for Trans Youth
The government wants to ban care nationwide, and hospitals are shutting down treatment. Parents just want it all to stop.

The Pew questions specifically asked respondents for their views on homosexuality, rather than the broader LGBTQ+ umbrella, and did not ask about transgender people. A Pew survey of LGBTQ+ adults in the U.S. last year found that most believed attitudes toward gay, lesbian, and bisexual people were becoming more positive, but that acceptance of trans people had declined.

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Samantha Riedel is a writer and editor whose work on transgender culture and politics has previously appeared in VICE, Bitch Magazine, and The Establishment. She lives in Massachusetts, where she is presently at work on her first manuscript. … Read More

In The Name Of Peace, Love, & Understanding

Today, I have Zoia Horn in mind especially, but it’s a really busy day in Peace & Justice History, with lots to inspire and motivate us, and most of that is below. (I wish we could put small images side by side, or else that I could figure out WP’s preferred method for that.)

March 16, 1190
The entire Jewish community of York, England, perished while observing Shabbat ha-Gadol, the last sabbath before Passover. Gathered together inside Clifford’s Tower, the keep of York’s medieval castle, for protection from the violent mob outside, many of the Jews took their own lives; others died in the flames they had lit, and those who finally surrendered were massacred and murdered.

Clifford’s Tower
This occurred just after the beginning of the Third Crusade. “Before attempting to revenge ourselves upon the Moslem unbelievers, let us first revenge ourselves upon the ‘killers of Christ’ living in our midst!”
March 16, 1827
The first newspaper owned and edited by and for African-Americans, Freedom’s Journal, was published in New York City.
It appeared the same year slavery was abolished in New York state. 

two of the early founders of Freedom’s Journal
March 16, 1921
The War Resisters International was founded with sections set up in Great Britain, the Netherlands, Germany and Austria. By 1939 there were 54 WRI Sections in 24 countries, including the U.S..

WRI No More War demonstration in Berlin 1922

Their symbol: a broken gun.Their slogan: “The right to refuse to kill.”
Their founding statement 
WRI today 
March 16, 1968
U.S. troops in South Vietnam killed 504 Vietnamese civilians at My Lai, a pair of hamlets in the coastal lowlands of Quang Ngai Province. The victims were from 247 families, completely eliminating 24 of them, three generations with no survivors. Among the dead were 182 women, 17 of them pregnant, and 173 children, including 56 infants,
and 60 older men.

Young girls sheltering behind their mother during My Lai
Lt. William L. Calley, Jr. commanded the men of Charlie Company, First Battalion, Americal Division, and was the only one tried out of 80 involved in what is called the My Lai Massacre. The Army, including a young Major Colin Powell, at first tried to cover it up and the media resisted reporting it.
Some of Calley’s soldiers refused to participate, but only 24-year-old helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson and his crew stopped it by putting themselves between the villagers and the troops pursuing them.Chief My Lai prosecutor William Eckhardt described how Thompson responded to what he found when he put his helicopter down: “[Thompson] put his guns on Americans, said he would shoot them if they shot another Vietnamese, had his people wade in the ditch in gore to their knees, to their hips, took out children, took them to the hospital…flew back [to headquarters], standing in front of people, tears rolling down his cheeks, pounding on the table saying, ‘Notice,
notice, notice’…then had the courage to testify time after time after time.”

Lt. William L. Calley
Some of Calley’s soldiers refused to participate, but only 24-year-old helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson and his crew stopped it by putting themselves between the villagers and the troops pursuing them.

Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson
Hugh Thompson’s story (An archived NYT piece that still wants a sign-in/up)
More on My Lai 
2015 article by Seymour Hersh who broke the original story: 
March 16, 1972
Reference librarian Zoia Horn refused to testify against the Harrisburg Seven who were on trial for an alleged conspiracy to kidnap then-National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger. Five of the seven were current or former Catholic priests or nuns.
Horn had been implicated by an ex-convict informer placed in the Bucknell University library by the FBI.

Reference librarian Zoia Horn
Though given immunity from self-incrimination, Zoia objected to the idea that libraries could become places of infiltration and spying. Charged with contempt of court, she was sent to jail for 20 days until a mistrial was declared.

Judith Krug, longtime director of the American Library Association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom, said that Horn was “the first librarian who spent time in jail for a value of our profession.” At the trial she asked to read a statement of explanation, but was led away in handcuffs before she had begun her third sentence:
“Your Honor, it is because I respect the function of this court to protect the rights of the individual, that I must refuse to testify. I cannot in my conscience lend myself to this black charade. I love and respect this country too much to see a farce made of the tenets upon which it stands. To me it stands on freedom of thought—but government spying in homes, in libraries and universities inhibits and destroys this freedom. It stands on freedom of association—yet in this case gatherings of friends, picnics and parties have been given sinister implications, and made suspect. It stands on freedom of speech—yet general discussions have been interpreted by the government as advocacies of conspiracies.”
Zoia Horn in the California Library Hall of Fame 
March 16, 1988
Iraqi forces acting under orders from President Saddam Hussein attacked the Kurdish village of Halabja with a variety of poison gasses including mustard gas and the nerve agents sarin, tabun, and VX. About 5,000 non-combatant men, but mostly women and children, died from the chemical weapons.This was part of Saddam’s al-Anfal campaign, a slow genocide of the Kurds in Iraq. About 2000 villages were emptied and leveled as well as a dozen larger towns and cities, tens of thousands were killed.

Kurdish father Omar Osman and his infant son, victims of Saddam Hussein’s poison gas attack on Halabja, Kurdistan (Iraq)
The Human Rights Watch full report on the al-Anfal Campaign
March 16, 2003
Rachel Corrie, an American college student in Gaza to protest Israeli military and security operations, was killed when run over by a bulldozer while trying to stop Israeli troops from demolishing a Palestinian home.

The 23-year-old from Olympia, Washington, was a member of International Solidarity Movement and was the first nonviolent western protester to die in the occupied territories.
Remembering Rachel Corrie
March 16, 2003
Over 5000 coordinated candlelight vigils and demonstrations took place, in more than 125 countries, in an eleventh-hour protest against the U.S. invasion of Iraq.


Knoxville, Tennessee Trafalgar Square, London

DOGE Bro’s Humiliating Deposition Is MUST SEE

This is very interesting.  The doge guy is under oath so can’t lie.  But he realizes he is going to have to admit to be antisemectic.  He works for a nazi and it is well known a lot of the doge people were Nazis themselves.  He suddenly realizes he will have to say it was the Jews people who were discriminating during the Holocaust.  First he tries to say it is DEI due to focusing on women which is gender so the grant had to be slashed.  But then he says women were discriminating against the males.  Finially when the lawyer asks how, he just gives up and admits it was the jewish people / Jewish women.  He probably thinks women discriminate against men because he can’t get a girl to date him or have sex he doesn’t have to pay for.  I think Brandon who is the black gentleman on the far right of the screen has the best and correct take on why the doge man / kid simply did not want to or couldn’t honestly answer the question. Hugs

 

A Quick & Easy Women’s History Post

It is almost 4 minutes. Watch it when you get a few minutes; not only is it history-making that she still sounds like this at 79, but the screen or screens behind her have their own little history bits. Enjoy! It’s not hard-rocking or loud or anything.

A Post for Women’s History Month

(Well, another one!) I watched part of Sherri Shepherd’s interview of Jayne Kennedy yesterday morning. I didn’t catch the beginning, but recognized the name earlier when I read it. I looked her up, and found the following from BET, and that’s the post. In addition to what’s included, Jayne Kennedy seems to be living with depressive anxiety, from what I gleaned in the Sherri interview. I couldn’t find anything about that, but she’s written a book, Plain Jayne that I intend to read as soon as I can. From this article, I figured out how I recognized her name and her face; I recall when she was in the Miss USA pageant in the late 1970s. Then I recalled she got a job on some sports show, as covered below. Anyway, this woman, aside from being talented and beautiful, is also courageous. Follow the links within for more information.

Women’s History Month: Celebrating Jayne Kennedy, The First Black Woman To Conquer Network Sports

Explore the multifaceted journey of the Emmy-winning trailblazer who transitioned from Hollywood to the NFL, changing the game forever.

By Tamara Brown March 9, 2026

NEW YORK – JANUARY 1: Jayne Kennedy and Brent Musburger on “N.F.L. Today,” on the CBS Sports television network. Circa 1978.

In the late 1970s, the network TV sports was a club where the doors were mostly locked to anyone who wasn’t white and male. But Jayne Kennedy didn’t just knock; she blasted those doors off the hinges.

As we continue our Women’s History Month spotlight, we’re looking back at the woman who, in 1978, became the first Black woman to co-host a major national sports program. When Kennedy stepped into the anchor chair on CBS’s The NFL Today, she did more than just read highlights. 

Jayne Kennedy, now 74, held that ground-breaking role from 1978 to 1980, quickly becoming one of the most recognizable faces in the country. Before her history-making run at CBS, the former Miss Ohio USA was already a star. She got her start as a dancer on Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In and spent years touring with legends like Bob Hope and Dean Martin.

While her Hollywood resume is long, her impact on the sports world is what truly changed the culture. Beyond the NFL, Kennedy remains the only woman to host the long-running series Greatest Sports Legends. She even stepped into the ring as the first female color commentator for men’s professional boxing.

Even now, Kennedy isn’t slowing down. She was a key player in the LA28 Foundation, helping secure the bid for the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. She’s also sharing her full story in her new memoir, Plain Jayne, which dives into the grit, faith, and ambition it took to navigate a career filled with hurdles.

By breaking that ceiling nearly 50 years ago, Kennedy didn’t just make a name for herself. She made sure that for the rest of us, the path was already paved with the excellence she brought to the screen every Sunday.

https://www.bet.com/article/kqmmay/womens-history-month-celebrating-jayne-kennedy-the-first-black-woman-to-conquer-network-sports

Christian Nationalists Love Trump’s Iran War

It surprises me how many religious evangelicals or fundies or whatever they are called are in Congress and government offices.  They really are believers in the 7 mountains religious theocracy takeover of the US government.  Between AIPAC and these religious people who believe Israel must be a beacon for all Jewish people to start the end times for their god to come home and hug them is horrific and costing the US every shred of our public safety net while providing Israel and religious organizations a free ride on our dime.  Hugs

 

For Women’s History Month,

a Monday entry that isn’t toooo historical, but is a nice tidbit. Enjoy the comic; the Women’s History bit is in the Soul Corner: “Painless Paula.”

https://www.gocomics.com/weepals/2026/03/08

Trump’s Bloodthirsty Ghouls Unleashed