Journeys of Women

It’s International Women’s Day! I was reminded of this by reading Facebook posts from people who are from or have lived in other countries. My favorite artist that I follow (and have posted about on this blog), Shamsia Hassani, created a sad but beautiful art piece for Women’s Day. You can see it by following her on Facebook. Nadia Nadim, my favorite professional soccer player, posted about it, too, giving a mini-history lesson about the beginning of the holiday. So today I’ll add my own contribution by sharing about an inspiring woman who has made about as many journeys as someone possibly can.

Yesterday, while at a coffeeshop in Salem for a job interview (Big news: career change time! Follow me on Facebook for more info), I picked up the local newspaper. The front page of the “Oregon Life” section had an article entitled “Diverse travelers offer invitations for ADVENTURE.” Of course, I had to check it out. It is from an article by Eve Chen and Bailey Schulz originally published in USA Today, and quotes a few very interesting travelers. The woman in the photo is Jessica Nabongo, who is evidently the first black woman to visit every country in the world.

Every country in the world! That got my attention. So I checked out her website. Here I’ll post a link to the “Destinations” page of her site, which tells a little about her and shows where she’s been. Of course, click on the “About” page to find out more about her. https://thecatchmeifyoucan.com/destinations

I think I’m drawn to her more than the other travelers in the article because we have some neat things in common. We have the same first name. Like her, I was born in a country that my parents weren’t from, and that gave us both the travel bug at a young age. (She was born here in the USA to immigrant parents, and I was born abroad to military parents). I’ve been to the country that her parents are from, Uganda, and it’s beautiful! But she has been to way more countries than me, even though she’s a good deal younger. I’m so impressed! How did she do it? I’ll have to buy her book, “The Catch Me If You Can,” to find out.

But mostly I’m impressed by her passion. According to the book blurb on her website, her “stories are love letters to diversity, beauty, and culture―and most of all, to the people she meets along the way.” In the article I read at the coffeeshop, she believes that people of all cultures can travel. I definitely want to read her book now!

That will have to wait a bit, though. I’m currently reading “A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush” by Eric Newby, whose writing many decades ago supposedly shook up the travel writing world. It is definitely funnier than something I’d expect to read from back then! But today is International Women’s Day, so back to our amazing woman traveler.

If Jessica Nabongo can visit every country in the world by her mid-30s, then all kinds of things are possible. Our dreams may not come true in the way we expect because we live in an imperfect world. But I believe there are things we can do to make our dreams come true in some way, especially if God has put them in our hearts.

I have been living one of my dreams for several years, and I’m grateful. But it is now time for a change so I can live other dreams of mine. Feel free to wish me luck or send up prayers for me in this. What is a dream that you have? How are you living it out, or what do you need to do in order to start it? Share in the comments if you wish.

With that, Happy International Women’s Day! Celebrate the women in your life or being a woman. And send up a prayer for the women in the world who are not as fortunate as others, such as those who live in countries that don’t give women equal rights.

Wow, it’s that time of year again! I’ll do an official end-of-year newsletter-style post next week. And I promise to have photos from some of my travels this year. But for today, I leave you with something I’ve been meaning to post since it came out a couple weeks ago: BBC’s 100 Women 2021 list.

This is a list of “100 inspiring and influential women from around the world” for this year. These women may not all have made physical journeys, but they have made a difference in the world in many ways. Around half of the women on the list this year are from Afghanistan, where I left my heart several years ago. One of them is Shamsia Hassani (listed as from Iran because she was born there), an artist whom I’ve written about before.

I hope you will be as inspired as I was by reading this. Whether you celebrate Christmas or other holidays this time of year, this is my gift to you. Here’s the link to the list:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-59514598

Hello readers! I’m excited to bring to you the journeys of two remarkable young women. Quick update: I am getting my full salary, and am thankful to God and the director of my school for this. I hope you are all doing well and staying safe! Here are a couple inspiring stories of journeys of women to keep you going.

The two young women I want to introduce to you are separated by a century in time. Bessie Coleman, known as “Queen Bess, Daredevil Aviatrix,” was a young African American aviator in the 1920s whose life was cut short doing what she loved. Phiona Mutesi, better known thanks to a Disney movie as “The Queen of Katwe,” is a champion of chess in her home country of Uganda, and is now a student in a Christian college here in the Pacific Northwest.

Bessie Coleman, public domain photo from Wikipedia

I’m going to let some short videos do most of the talking for me this time, because they are very well-done and speak for themselves. (And because I have a lot of paperwork to do for one of the local school districts, but don’t want to keep putting off this post). You are also welcome to research these two amazing ladies on your own.

All I will say about them is that they both overcame incredible odds (between the two of them- racism, classism, and poverty), and used their talents to change their own lives and the lives of others. I’ll let you find out for yourselves what they did.

This video is an artsy look at Bessie Coleman’s life, found on PBS: https://www.pbs.org/video/aviator-bessie-coleman-ztdgjl/

I also learned about her from a history book I have:  “Great African Americans in History” by Carlotta Hacker, Crabtree Publishing Company, 1997.

For Phiona, check out these two videos done by ABC news and a recent radio interview with her on WBUR:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEcxNpd3WQA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGC0MrWuUTk

https://www.wbur.org/onlyagame/2019/01/11/queen-of-katwe-phiona-mutesi-chess

And of course, check out the Disney movie! It is now my favorite Disney “princess” movie! It actually sticks to the real story pretty well instead of “Disney-fying” it.

I hope these two women inspire you as much as they did me. Since I’ve been stuck with the same 10 mostly educational DVDs I checked out from the library in March (it’s been closed and keeps extending the due date; I think soon I’ll own these DVDs! Anyone need some Bill Nye the Science Guy?), I’ve watched “The Queen of Katwe” twice. It is so good! I hope I can meet the real Phiona Mutesi someday. And I wish I could have been around to watch Bessie Coleman fly. But for now, I will celebrate their lives, and endeavor to develop my own talents and help others.

The good news is, I should be able to post more often for the next several weeks! The bad news is, practically the whole world’s shut down. (Don’t worry; I’m still employed for the time being; my private school is keeping the teachers on and planning to teach online starting very soon, so I’ll keep busy planning for that.) I’m processing this pandemic crisis in a paper journal my friend got me, and in bits and pieces on Facebook posts. So I won’t elaborate on my feelings about “staying home” in the current world of Covid-19. But I will take some time to highlight some women’s journeys since that’s what this blog is about, just in time for National Women’s History Month (and bit late for International Women’s Day).

First, though, I will give an important update. I finally saw the new Harriet Tubman movie (Harriet)! And it’s awesome! Talk about a woman’s journey! Epic! (Don’t worry, since I mentioned her in a previous post, I’ll still focus on different women for this one.) The movie highlights how she relied on hearing God’s guidance to show her the way to freedom, and the strength she had to keep walking and face her enemies when fear or fatigue threatened to stop her from saving lives. So good! That’s all I’ll say about the movie and about her. If you’re not interested in the movie, do a little research to find out more than you know already. I guarantee you’ll find it interesting.

Since I’m way behind on blog posts, I’m going to showcase two women this time. It’s only right, since it’s National Women’s History Month. Earlier this month was International Women’s Day. And since I discovered International Women’s Day while living and working in Afghanistan, I’m choosing two talented women of Afghan heritage to write about. Side note: I love International Women’s Day! Feel free to look up its history yourself. It’s fascinating. Also, happy late Nowruz! (Happy New Year to the Persian world).

Anyway, back to women’s journeys! This will be brief because I really don’t know that much about the journeys of these two women. But they’ve both been around the world and here in Oregon for the sake of their work, and that’s cool! And they are both public advocates for women’s rights, fitting for this month. One is an athlete and the other an artist.

Nadia Nadim is a professional football (called soccer in the USA) player. I got to watch her play for the Portland Thorns (the sister team to the Portland Timbers) here in Oregon. She was born in Herat, Afghanistan, where her father taught her how to play football. After he was killed by the Taliban, her family fled to Denmark. She grew up playing soccer there and eventually played professionally. She then played for a couple teams in the USA, including the Thorns. More recently she played for Manchester City, and was just signed for Paris St.-Germain. She was recently designated as UNESCO Champion for Girls and Women’s Education in 2019 “in recognition of her role in promoting sport and gender equality, her contribution to UNESCO’s educational action in favour of young people, advocacy for girls and women’s education and support for the Organization’s action worldwide.” She is publishing an autobiography, which I hope to read! For more information, check out her webpage http://nadianadim.com/ and information about her UNESCO designation at http://www.unesco.org/new/en/goodwill-ambassadors/champions-for-sport/nadia-nadim/ .

Shamsia Hassani is officially my favorite painting artist. I’m usually more into photography and writing as art forms, although I do like some of the classic painters like van Gogh and Monet. But last summer during an Art Walk here in Eugene, I discovered Hassani’s work in a brochure of the 20X21 mural project in the city. Her mural is literally down the street from where I live! She painted it on my birthday a few years ago. I wish I’d known about it; I’d have walked down and watched her paint! I’ll post my own photo of the mural here, but also check it out on her website. It’s the first one shown on the “Graffiti Works” page at https://www.shamsiahassani.net/Graffiti-works.html#header1-2o Keep scrolling down that page to see one that I’d love to see with my own eyes, done on a sidewalk. It makes me think of the scene in the old Mary Poppins movie where they draw on the sidewalks and then step through to a different world. Ms. Hassani is a professor at Kabul University, and is the first female graffiti artist in Afghanistan. Art is her “friendly way to fight” the bad memories of war as well as for the rights of women (see her interview in http://www.streetartbio.com/shamsia-hassani-interview ) and the “About” page on her website (https://www.shamsiahassani.net/about-shamsia-hassani.html ).

Mural in Eugene, Oregon, USA by Shamsia Hassani, photo by Jessie Johnson

Originally I had posted a list of ways to “enjoy the journey” from home since most of us are not able to get out and travel, explore, or have adventures right now due to Covid-19. But I kept finding fun things to do to add to my list, and it was getting pretty lengthy, so I will now make that into it’s own separate post for your convenient reference. Also watch for the next post about women’s journeys, coming soon. It will be about “Two Young Queens:” Bessie Coleman, aka “Queen Bess, Daredevil Aviatrix” and Phiona Mutesi, “The Queen of Katwe.” If you can’t wait to find out who these two amazing young women are, feel free to look them up on your own.

Happy Veterans Day, to my parents, relatives, and friends who have served their countries in the military! Thank you for your service. Most of you have sacrificed much. In your honor, I bring you this short post (you’ll need to read the article attached in the link to get the most out of it) about one historical figure that most people don’t realize was a veteran.

Right now in the theaters is a movie that I hope to see soon. Harriet Tubman was always one of my heroes growing up. Talk about a woman’s journey! Or several of them, all dangerous rescue missions! But as I got older and became a history teacher, I realized that she was even tougher than I’d ever realized. And much more fascinating. After her time as a conductor on the Underground Railroad, she worked for the Union army in a number of capacities. That makes her my favorite famous veteran! Check out this article, by the Smithsonian Institute, about the movie and her real life. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/true-story-harriet-tubman-movie-180973413/?utm_source=smithsoniandaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20191030-daily-responsive&spMailingID=41005509&spUserID=NDc3OTk0NTI0ODU1S0&spJobID=1622803703&spReportId=MTYyMjgwMzcwMwS2

Enjoy! And please tell me what you think of the movie if you’ve gotten to see it! I hope to soon!

I’m finally catching up on some of the amazing women’s journeys I’ve been wanting to write about. I’ll write one today and hopefully the next few soon. Thank you for your patience! I did write a post for my church blog recently, and you can read that here https://www.citysalt.org/blog/2019/9/13saltandlight-jj  if you’re interested.

For this post, I bring to you an early American superstar reporter. She even pioneered her style of investigative journalism. I recently discovered Elizabeth Cochrane, better known by her pen name Nellie Bly. After I read about her, I couldn’t believe I’d never heard of her before!

Remember the classic Jules Verne book, Around the World in 80 Days? Well, Nellie Bly decided to beat it. In the late 1800s. By herself. This was after multiple career-defining experiences (I don’t want to sound like the encyclopedia articles I’ve read, so I’ll just briefly mention them) such as living in México for several months to report on government corruption and the plight of the poor there, and going undercover at a mental institution (by faking her own insanity) to report on the conditions there. Dang, girl! For a single woman in the 1800s, that was pretty gutsy!

She decided to race around the world in nearly every kind of transportation imaginable, except airplanes, because they didn’t exist yet. The story would be covered in the newspaper she worked for, Joseph Pulitzer’s the New York World. She left in November 1889. A rival journal, Cosmopolitan, sent their own woman traveler, Elizabeth Bisland, in order to beat her, but Bly kept on her own plans, not interested in beating anyone except the fictional hero in Verne’s novel. Is this the same Cosmopolitan that I see in stores nowadays, that seems obsessed with fashion and makeup and other things that don’t interest me? I hope they go back to cool stunts like racing women around the world! Anyway, back to the story. Bly beat Bisland, making it around the world in 72 days. Her newspaper had made a board game and public contest out of her trip to keep readers engaged.

I’ll let you do the work of looking her up and finding out the fascinating details of her journey, but I just had to give a shout-out to such an awesome woman. Especially back then. Girl Power! As soon as I have the money to replace my dead Kindle, I’ll be buying her books (they’ll definitely be free since there from the century before last!) which seem to be mostly collections of articles about her travels.

Here are some websites I found information on, and others for further reading:

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Nellie-Bly

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nellie_Bly

https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/nellie-bly

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/how-nellie-bly-went-undercover-to-expose-abuse-of-the-mentally-ill

I meant to write a post last week to honor some of the women who have explored and championed national parks. But life happens and gets busy, as it always does. So this will be a belated and short post.

First I want to honor Willa Cather. In college, my favorite book from American Lit class was O Pioneers!, which to this day is my favorite prairie romance novel. I should tell you that the class was taught by a man, and he had no qualms in making us read it. It’s not like the modern cheesy prairie romance novels at all, but it may well make you cry. It also helped me feel closer to my Nebraska roots.  So imagine my surprise when I was hiking Arizona’s Walnut Canyon National Monument, and found an interpretive sign with a quote from her about it! She loved exploring America’s national parks, and let them inspire her writing. You can read more about her from the National Park Service’s website here: https://www.nps.gov/people/willa-cather.htm

And then in doing an internet search, I found this cool lady. https://www.expeditions.com/why-us/women-explorers/annie-fiske/  I’m not going to write much about her for now, because I’m hoping to write an article soon about the topic of wonder, which she is evidently an official advocate for (I didn’t know that was a thing! But I like it!). It makes sense, though, because national parks are one of the things that bring out the wonder in me. But again, more on that in the future.

Personally, I’m inspired by the women (and men, but I focus on women’s journey’s in this blog) in my life that love to explore national parks. I have several good friends that have joined me in visiting them. And I’m always inspired by my neighbor gal, a young woman from Minnesota who backpacks in national forests and parks as much as she can. What women do you know who have inspired you by exploring national parks? Where have your national park journeys taken you? Please leave comments!

It’s been a long time since I wrote about the journeys of women. I haven’t figured out exactly why, because there are millions of amazing stories out there to write about. I think I stopped because most of the stories I know about are already told somewhere, and I felt like I was rehashing them for little purpose.

Last night, however, I found a story that reignited my passion for sharing the journeys of women. My friend Sarah had invited me to join her at the Asian Celebration, a local festival. We ate good food, wandered the art exhibits and artisan booths, and watched Taiko drummers and Balinese dancing. But the highlight for me was the Minidoka Swing Band. It’s exactly what it sounds like, a big band playing ’30s and ’40s jazz standards, but with a twist. It’s dedicated to the Japanese-Americans who were interned during WWII, and named after an internment camp in Idaho. Some of the members were interned there or other places, and others are the descendants of people who were.

I’ll highlight here one of the vocalists, Nola Sugai Bogle. Her official band member bio can be found at http://www.minidokaswingband.com/index.php/meet-our-minidoka-swing-band-musicians/  I learned only a little about her from the concert, namely that she had been interned at Minidoka. But her bio tells much more about her journey. She was born in 1938 in Detroit, Michigan to a Japanese American father and Chinese American mother, and grew up loving music. Then her family was interned at Minidoka in Idaho, where she remembers hearing big band music over the radio. It doesn’t say where she lived after that, but in the late ’50s she won a talent/beauty contest in Ontario, Oregon, and moved to Boise, Idaho, where she moonlighted as a drummer/vocalist. She later moved to Portland, Oregon, and married  pianist/jazz club owner Sidney Porter. Years after he died, she married Dick Bogle, the first African American TV news anchor in the Northwest (among other things; his fascinating bio can be read at https://oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/bogle_dick_1930_2010/#.XGnkuehKjIU ) She has been performing in a variety of groups and places all along aside from when she took time off to stay home with her children, and joined the Minidoka band in 2008.

She and her son took turns being the vocalists for several of the songs performed by the band last night. They were both fantastic. After the concert, I thanked her for sharing her voice with us. She said I was sweet, and proceeded to pack up the band things. I’d have loved to talk to her more, but didn’t want to keep her. So I’m grateful to find her online bio and see a bit of her story.

I love to hear stories like hers, because even though her journey was forced, unjust, and shouldn’t have happened, it was part of her story, and part of what makes her who she is. And she found something beautiful (music) to keep her going, which is a huge part of her life. Granted, this is all what I am reading into her story by what little I saw and read about her. But from what I saw, that’s what I felt she would say. That and to learn from history and never let mistreatment of an entire ethnic group happen again in our country.

I wish very much that I had recorded the stories told to me by some amazing people that I met years ago when working at a school in Salem. Like Chella, a Holocaust survivor, who came to speak to my students when I was an instructional assistant in Salem. I got to pick her up and take her home to her apartment in Portland, where she showed me the three photographs that survived her childhood. Then there was Channary, a Cambodian woman whose amazing and heartbreaking story I heard bits and pieces of from other fellow coworkers at that same school, and the custodian from Laos who told me a bit of his story too (I know; he’s a man and this blog is focused on women, but his story deserves to be mentioned just the same).

These journeys were not by choice, and had traumatic aspects to them. But they all share something: courage and hope for a better future. Their stories need to be told and retold. Because sometimes our life’s journey includes places we don’t intend to go, but they can still bring us to places of beauty if we have the courage to go on. And of course, to fight for justice and peace in the world so people can choose the journeys they take.Nola Sugai Bogle is on the left, singing with heart and soul. Photo by the blog’s author.

Two blog posts in one day! Next month I’ll be typing away for NaNoWriMo, so I figure I’d better get my blogging in now!

And with this post, I’ll (mostly) return to the original purpose of this blog: to highlight the heroic/epic journeys of women (fictional, historical, or currently living). My last post shared some of my personal emotional journey, because friends and family supported me through my going to and returning from China. But I’d like to get back to sharing the journeys of other women. And what better timing than right after the Race for the Cure!

This past Sunday, my mother and I walked in the Susan G. Kommen Race for the Cure. We had never been to it before. We were blown away. It was like a fair, but better: booths giving away gifts to honor those who have survived breast cancer or were supporting the cause in the race. There were so many people! When it came time for the race, my mom, my stepdad, and I were all moved by the crowds of people of all ages and genders, all walking in celebration of loved ones, or survivors celebrating their own victories. My adorable step-nephews walked in it too, for my mom’s sake. She’s still in chemo. But she’s a fighter, and I know she’ll win this battle. She walked the shorter route. But the way I see it, it was an epic journey. Running the race to prove that cancer can’t have her spirit. Can’t defeat her courage. Her name means “victorious.” And she will be.

Mom, you’re my hero.

Soon, very soon, this blog will be commandeered by yours truly to document my upcoming journey to China. But I couldn’t do that without doing one more traditional Compass Rose Queen post about two heroic women. (And I may occasionally interrupt my travel log to write about more amazing women when I get to China). This post will be about two historical figures: Princess Kasune and Princess Cornblossom. This will not be a reference site, so be sure to research them yourself for more information, but I wanted to introduce them to my readers.

I already packed up all my books, including the one written by Princess Kasune Zulu, called “Warrior Princess.” It was published fairly recently. I haven’t been able to read much, but I will write about what stood out to me (which is what I remember, so it may not be completely accurate). Princess Kasune isn’t a title, Princess is her first name. Her parents named her that because she did have royalty in her lineage from her tribe in Zambia. After being diagnosed with HIV, she set out on a lifelong epic journey to educate people about the disease. She has even gone so far as to hitchhike and then share her message to the truckers that were often promiscuous. Princess has traveled all over Africa and the world with this mission to fight the epidemic of AIDS, for the sake of the millions of orphaned children. So I say, she’s a real-life modern-day Warrior Princess. Check out her website for more information:  http://www.princesszulu.com

For the other Warrior Princess, we need to go back in time to early 1800’s Kentucky. In the class I student-taught this spring, my middle school kids were studying Westward Expansion, including the Indian Removal Act. But I didn’t discover this story by researching for my teaching. I was looking up waterfalls in Kentucky for the fun of it (I have family there and I love waterfalls). I stumbled on one named Princess Falls, and learned that it was named after a Cherokee woman because of her bravery at nearby Yahoo Falls, the tallest in Kentucky. Princess Cornblossom (which likely wasn’t her real name or title from what I can find online) was the daughter of Cherokee Chief Doublehead. After his assassination by Major Ridge and others (who was later assassinated for roughly the same reason), his daughter, whom we now call Princess Cornblossom, took over leadership for the tribe. She had planned to lead her people on the Tellico Trail to a school in Tennessee where they could be safe from the settlers who were trying to drive them out of their lands. While her people waited for her in the cave behind Yahoo Falls, “Indian Fighters” found them exposed and massacred them. Over 100 women and children died. But then Cornblossom and her son (and some accounts I found include others) came upon them, and this time the Indian Fighters were the ones exposed. Cornblossom gave a short speech defying the murderers, and she and her party killed most of the Indian fighters. Cornblossom was mortally wounded in the battle and died days later. Some accounts say she died of grief from the death of her people. For more information, search for Cornblossom or Doublehead, and try to decipher the history between the accounts.

So there you have it, two real-life warrior princesses. Neither are technically princesses, but both are noble of heart. Both are warriors: Princess Kasune in a more figurative way, and Princess Cornblossom quite literally. Both are braver than I ever will be. But I am proud to share their stories, and hope that their causes will be carried on. I hope that Princess Kasune Zulu’s fight against HIV is won eventually, and that Princess Cornblossom’s story inspires us to keep injustices like that from happening again.

This will probably be my last post for a while about the epic journeys of women. I’ll probably be posting just about my own journey to and in China for a while. I’ll eventually categorize the two types of posts (personal and not).

I leave this Sunday. Next time I post, I’ll be on the other side of the world!