Once more, with feeling. We have to fight back.

I wrote this for Mother Courant. It has Isabella in it.

Meanwhile, at Susan B. Anthony’s grave…

Earlier this year, people voting in New York’s primary affixed their “I voted!” stickers to her tombstone. Here in Hartford, I want to do the same come Tuesday, on Isabella Beecher Hooker‘s grave at the historic Cedar Hill Cemetery — though the logistics of voting, driving 45 minutes up to Hartford, affixing the sticker, and driving back in time for …

Victoria Woodhull for President

The media is trumpeting that Hillary Clinton is the presumptive presidential nominee for the Democratic Party, which makes her America’s first woman candidate for a major political party. And all I can think about is Victoria Claflin Woodhull. In 1872, Woodhull ran for president on the Equal Rights ticket. Her platform included equal rights for women (this at a time when votes …

If you’ve nothing better to do…

I’m speaking to Friends of the Enfield Library at noon tomorrow, Friday, and I hope you’ll come heckle.

If you’ve nothing better to do…

…at 6:30 p.m. today at the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center, I’m moderating a (free) discussion on Spiritualism, which is a favorite topic of mine. I learned quite a bit about it when I wrote my Isabella Beecher Hooker biography, but I’m always anxious to learn more. (Spiritualism, the notion that the living can still correspond with the …

Happy birthday, Isabella Beecher Hooker

Born on this day in 1822 in Litchfield, Conn., the ninth child (and third daughter) of Lyman Beecher and his second wife, Harriet Porter. Isabella grew up a committed abolitionist, and suffragist. She and her husband, John, wrote a bill that granted to women the right to own property. She pushed for votes for women, rewrote …

If you’ve nothing better to do…

…I’m speaking about (what else?) Isabella Beecher Hooker at Hartford’s Cedar Hill Cemetery in a lecture sponsored by the historic cemetery’s foundation, at 5:30 p.m. Thursday. If you’ve never been to Cedar Hill, you owe yourself a trip. It’s beautiful (and Isabella and her family are buried there).

If you’ve nothing better to do…

…I’m speaking about Isabella Beecher Hooker at 6 p.m. Friday at the Grange Hall in East Haddam, as a guest of the Friends of the East Haddam Public Libraries. Suggested donation (to the Friends, not me) is $5 and refreshments will be served. Come on! Heckle! (Directions to Grange Hall are here.)

As of today, it’s been 95 years and a day…

…since women got the right to vote. Ad though this may seem strictly a shameless plug, I’d like to say thank you to the women (and men) who worked hard in the suffrage movement but didn’t become marquee names for all kinds of reasons, none of them very good. That includes, of course, my own …

If you’ve nothing better to do…

I’m speaking at the Lebanon Historical Society at 3 p.m. on Sunday. I love Lebanon. The green is huge and it’s surrounded by history and farmlands. When I lived in the area, I would drive there just to walk around the green. Come early! Heckle!