• November is the month of the Crone -- the Wise Old Woman aspect of the Triple Goddess. The Crone often wore a veil, which represented the future. Seeing behind the veil meant viewing one's own future and death.

• Tuesday following the first Monday Election Day. Honor the women and men who fought for your right to vote by exercising that right!

• [October 31], November 1 and 2: Festivals and festivities with roots in ancient rituals of death and rebirth. Dia de los Muertos Day of the Dead) originated in Mexico to honor ancestors with skull-shaped cookies, dancing and other festivities to bring closer the spirits of the dead. The Celtic Samhain, with roots in ancient Greece, welcomes the harvest and the time of year when the veil between the living and the dead is most ethereal, and the spirits of the dead are nearest the living. All Saints Day, All Souls Day honor loved ones who have gone before. The Celtic practice of placing skulls of ancestors at their door may explain the pumpkin lanterns of Halloween.

• Fourth Thursday in November Thanksgiving Day, U.S.A.

• November 1, 1848 New England Medical College, the first U.S. medical school for women, opened in Boston. Students learned mostly midwifery and nursing in order to spare ladies the embarrassment of being treated by men. In 1874, the school merged with Boston University School of Medicine to become the first co-ed medical school, taking a step forward for women finally to become accepted as recognized medical practitioners.

• November 3, 1868 According to legend, a California stagecoach driver known as Charley Parkhurst became the first woman in the world to vote in a presidential election. Charley’s disguise as a man went undetected until her death.

• November 4, 1924 Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming became the nation's first female governor, winning a special election to replace her late husband's appointed successor. She later later served as the first female director of the United States Mint. Ross remains the only female governor in Wyoming's history.

• November 5, 1857 Birth of Ida Tarbell, journalist who wrote a book that exposed the corruption of oil magnate John D. Rockefeller, leading to the breakup of his Standard Oil Company. Tarbell had studied French rebel Madame Roland and her role in the French Revolution. "There is no man more dangerous, in a position of power, than he who refuses to accept as a working truth that all a man does should make for rightness and soundness, that even the fixing of a tariff rate must be moral."

• November 5, 1872 Susan B. Anthony and 14 other women voted in Rochester, New York. Two weeks later, Anthony was arrested for voting illegally as no woman in the United States had the right to vote.

• November 7, 1893 After a long struggle, Colorado became the third state after Wyoming to grant permanent woman suffrage.

• November 7, 2000 Hillary Clinton became the only first lady elected to the U.S. Senate and to run for president. After she lost the Democratic presidential nomination to Barrack Obama in 2008, he appointed her Secretary of State. As the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton won three million more votes than Donald Trump.

• November 8, 1908 Birth of Martha Gellhorn, American war correspondent who covered the D-Day landings after sneaking onto a hospital ship, leaving her husband, Ernest Hemingway, behind. Gellhorn went on to cover the liberation of the Dachau prison camp, and more major conflicts. She wrote five novels, 14 novellas, and short stories. "Gradually I came to realize that people will more readily swallow lies than truth, as if the taste of lies was homey, appetizing: a habit."

• November 8, 1897 Birth of Dorothy Day, radical humanitarian and pacifist who founded the Catholic Worker. "The Gospel takes away our right forever to discriminate between the deserving and the undeserving poor."

• November 11 Veterans Day (USA). Honor our soldiers. End war. The original Veterans Day was Armistice Day, signed on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, ending World War I. It was to be the war to end all wars.

• November 11 Remembrance Day (British Commonwealth) honors members of armed forces who died in WW I and beyond. Remembrance Day began the tradition of the poppy symbolizing fallen soldiers, taken from the poem "In Flanders Fields" by Canadian physician Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae: "In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place . . . We are the Dead. . . ."

• November 11, 1744 Birth of Abigail Adams, who in a letter, urged her husband, John, to "remember the ladies." He laughed. He would become a future President of the U.S. as would her son. "Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of husbands. Remember all men would be tyrants if they could."

• November 11, 1993 The Vietnam Women's Memorial was established, honoring the 10,000 women who served in that conflict. Glenna Goodacre, who designed the Sacagawea dollor, designed the memorial.

• November 12, 1751 Margaret Corbin became the first woman to receive a military pension. She took over firing the cannon during the battle at Fort Washington after her husband was killed. Margaret Corbin was severely wounded in that battle.

• November 12, 1815 Birth of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, co-organizer of the first women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, NY. She went on to form an alliance with Susan B. Anthony to continue the fight for women’s rights until both died, still denied the right to vote. "The Bible and the Church have been the greatest stumbling blocks in the way of women's emancipation."

• November 13 Feast Day of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, Italian-American founder of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart, and the first American citizen to be canonized as a saint. Mother Cabrini, "Patroness of Immigrants," founded 67 institutions, including schools, hospitals and orphanages.

• November 13, 1974 Karen Silkwood, a laboratory technician at Kerr-McGee nuclear facility, was killed in a car "accident" en route to meet a union representative and a newspaper reporter. The evidence she carried of Kerr-McGee's gross negligence was never found. The 1983 movie Silkwood, starring Meryl Streep and Cher, tells some of Karen Silkwood's story.

• November 14, 1917 "Night of Terror," when suffragists were imprisoned and brutalized after picketing the White House, demanding the right to vote.

• November 14, 1946 Socialist Emily Greene Balch, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Balch cofounded with Jane Addams the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. Long regarded as a Dangerous Woman, she tried to warn the world of the dangers of Hitler and fascism.

• November 15, 1887 Birth of pathbreaking American artist Georgia O'Keeffe, whose modernist paintings of New York cityscapes and New Mexico landscapes broke ground for recognition of women artists. "I've been absolutely terrified every moment of my life - and I've never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do."

• November 16, 1916 Margaret Sanger was arrested in Brownsville, NY, for operating a birth control clinic -- the first in the US. She went on to found what became Planned Parenthood. "Woman must not accept; she must challenge."

• November 17, 1637 Anne Hutchinson was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for defying the colony’s male religious leaders.

• November 17 Feast of St. Hilda, patron saint of business and professional women.

• November 18, 1787 Birth of Sojourner Truth, abolitionist, suffragist, and evangelist, whose "Am I not a Woman" speech electrified an 1851 Ohio women's rights convention."Religion without humanity is very poor human stuff."

• November 18, 1945 Birth of Wilma Mankiller, first female chief of the Cherokee Nation. "Take care how you place your moccasins upon the Earth, step with care, for the faces of future generations are looking up from the Earth waiting their turn for life."

• November 18, 1948 Birth of Ana Mendieta, multi-faceted Cuban-born artist and performance artist whose work often reflected the violence she observed and experienced. "My art is the way I reestablish the bonds that tie me to the universe."

• November 22, 1943 Birth of Billie Jean King, tennis champion who won 20 Wimbledon titles, and lifelong advocate for women in sports. "Be bold. If you're going to make an error, make it a doozy, and don't be afraid to hit the ball."

• November 22, 2005 Physicist Angela Merkel became the first female chancellor of Germany, winning the nickname "Mutti" - Mother of the Nation.

• November 23, 1921 Passage of the Sheppard-Towner Act, providing federal funds for care of mothers and their babies, particularly in rural states. Julia Lathrop, with huge efforts from progressive women's organizations, led the campaign for its passage and became the first head of the Children's Bureau. Representative Jeannette Rankin of Montana sponsored the legislation. As part of the backlash against passage of woman suffrage in 1920, and other advances for women, funding for the Sheppard-Towner Act ended in 1929.

• November 24, 1910 Birth of Lucy Covington, tribal council member of Washington State's Colville tribe. Covington was instrumental in preventing her tribe from being terminated by the U.S. government. "We had a beautiful way of life. We were rich. The [Grand Coulee] dam made us poor."

• November 25, 1960 Patria, Minerva, and Maria Teresa Mirabel, activists who opposed the Dominican Republic dictator Rafael Trujillo, were assassinated on orders of Trujillo. Only sister Dedé lived. The Mirabel sisters became symbols of resistance to Trujillo, who was assassinated a year after the sisters' murders.

• November 25, 2000 First annual observance of International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, designated by the U.N. General Assembly in honor of the Mirabel Sisters. The day that violence against women stops will be a day of Women's Merrymaking.

• November 25 Women's Merrymaking Day Greek / Roman festival to the Goddess Persephone, who wintered in the underworld and emerged to the awakening Earth in the spring. The festival long has been observed in Western Europe with general merrymaking.

• November 26, 1792 Birth of Sarah Grimke, abolitionist, suffragist, and women's rights advocate whose daring began to open doors for women's right to speak in public. "I ask no favors for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks and permit us to stand upright on the ground which God has designed us to occupy."

• November 28 Day of St. Sophia, Goddess of Wisdom.

• November 28, 1919 American citizen Nancy Astor became the first woman elected to the British House of Commons, serving for 26 years and furthering the cause of progressive education.

• November 29 Feast of Egyptian Sky Goddess Hathor.

• November 29, 1926 Birth of Michiko Nishiura Weglyn, Japanese American activist, costume designer, and author of Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of America's Concentration Camps. She advocated for Japanese Americans denied compensation for their internment during World War II. "What startled me into disbelief . . . was the preposterous lie spewed forth by the then-attorney general Ramsey Clark [that the U.S. had never had concentration camps]."

• November 30 Day of Mawu, African Creator Goddess.

Lifting the Veil and Living the Legacy:
Celebrating Elizabeth Cady Stanton's Birthday

On November 12 we celebrate the birthday of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who fought for women’s rights for more than 50 years. She died in 1902, still not allowed to vote. I believe Elizabeth would be both elated and appalled. I wonder what Elizabeth would think about where we are now. Yes, we have most of the rights she fought for in this country. Yet many women, men, and children, still are denied basic human rights of home, health, and security, in this country and around the world.

Her journey as a formidable women’s rights leader began behind a curtain in London. There, at the 1840 World's Anti-Slavery Convention, male delegates immediately set to work wrangling over the first burning question. It had nothing to do with slavery, but with whether or not women delegates were worthy of participating. Newly-wed Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Quaker minister Lucretia Mott, an elected delegate, watched in astonishment as delegates Stanton called "narrow-minded bigots, pretending to be teachers and leaders of men," refused to seat the women, and banished them to seats behind a low curtain. Infuriated, Stanton and Mott resolved to hold a convention to address the rights of women when they returned home.

Eight years later, 32-year-old Elizabeth Cady Stanton and 55-year-old Lucretia Mott were among five women who met over tea in Seneca Falls, New York and planned the world's first women's rights convention. The July 19 and 20, 1848 convention would change the world. It produced two radical documents: the Declaration of Sentiments and the Resolutions, both written largely by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and inspired by the Declaration of Independence.

"The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman," stated the Declaration of Sentiments, "having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her." The Declaration listed 18 areas of "tyranny" and tradition, including laws that barred women from owning property, testifying in court, child custody, access to education and professions, speaking freely in public, controlling their lives and bodies both in and outside of marriage, and a voice in making laws that governed their lives. The Seneca Falls Resolutions demanded that these veils of restrictions be lifted. Eight passed easily with the ninth barely passing because it was so radical: the notion that women should secure the "sacred right" to vote.

Media and clerical reaction to the Seneca Falls Convention was so swift and so savage that Elizabeth Cady Stanton later would write, "If I had had the slightest premonition of all that was to follow that convention, I fear I should not have had the courage to risk it . . .." Newspaper editors had a grand time, labeling the convention a "petticoat rebellion" dreamed up by "love-starved spinsters" and "dried-up old maids." Never mind that between them, Stanton and Mott eventually would have 15 children. Largely due to the demand for voting rights, "[M]ost of the ladies who had attended the convention and signed the declaration, one by one, withdrew their names and influence and joined our persecutors," Stanton wrote. "Our friends gave us the cold shoulder and felt themselves disgraced by the whole proceeding."

It was the beginning of a long and lonely struggle. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, soon joined by Susan B. Anthony, would make a formidable team as leaders of the early movement. Stanton, Anthony and Mott all would die before their right to vote would be recognized. One by one, rights were won -- none without exhausting effort. The struggle for the right to vote took 72 years, until 1920, although women in some western states won the vote before 1920. Men as well as women helped in the struggle, while many men and women fought women's rights as contrary to Nature.

"It is doubtful if any man, even among suffrage men, ever realized what the suffrage struggle came to mean to women before the end was allowed in America," wrote Carrie Chapman Catt and Nettie Rogers Shuler in 1923. "How much of time and patience, how much work, energy and aspiration, how much faith, how much hope, how much despair went into it. It leaves its mark on one, such a struggle."

Many veils have been lifted for women. Yet many women's lives still are shrouded in threats of violence, poverty and disease, and in fear for the lives and well-being of the children and men and women they love.

As we celebrate Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s birthday, we must remember and recognize the work of our foremothers and forefathers for freedom, and of the continuing struggles for justice around the world.

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