Remember back in March when, to mark the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day, we posted a call to action on this blog - urging wwp members and friends to use this year to bring to light the story of a woman who came before us, and whose life might run the risk of being lost to history if we didn't do something concrete to mark and record that life? Out of this call to action came the inauguration of the wwp Philosophy Club and our first six-week series connected to it, entitled The Invisible Matron. When the series drew to a close at the end of May, the lives of 9 hitherto uncelebrated extraordinary women had been recuperated by partipants and brought into dialogue with our philosophical discussions around voice, liminality, and the aging female body.On a more personal note, and in that same post, Linnet spoke of a personal project that she was undertaking in the hope of finding out more about three shadowy female relatives in her family - one of whom was her paternal grandmother who had lost contact with her father back in 1930 when he was just two years old. Beyond knowing her name, Linnet knew nothing of this woman and had never even seen a photograph of her. Six months later, the photograph of a beautifully flapperesque Hylda Louise sits on Linnet's mantelpiece, and the pieces of her grandmother's colourful life are slowly falling into place. Among these pieces is the discovery of two half-siblings that Linnet's father never knew he had. Linnet is travelling to England next week to meet one of them, and will no doubt know a lot more about her grandmother by the time she returns. At wine women and philosophy we speak a lot about things we can do to open the door to more imaginative futures...In this case, a subscription to ancestry.com has closed the door on an imagined past and opened the door to a whole new family!
And speaking of making links...While Linnet is in London she will be attending a philosophy discussion put on by Philosophy For All entitled "What are you thinking about?". She will also be meeting with PFL founder and the editor of Philosophy Now magazine, Anji Steinbauer, to talk about teaching philosophy in an adult education context, about designing philosophy programs with women in mind, and about the creation of an exciting new London-based initiative that brings philosophy to the public - the London School of Philosophy.
Remember those field trips back when you were in elementary school?...Does anybody smell the whiff of a wine women and philosophy field trip to London in the works?...
