Welcome to Mary's Blogspot

We have set up this site for Mary's friends and family to share stories, memories, feelings, photos, whatever you like. Please add to it by clicking on Comments below any post.

Friday, April 2, 2010

Sunday, March 7, 2010

Marty's comments from the memorial

Mary and I were partners from the start in the development of Two Acre Wood, searching for land, meetings every week for years, designing the development, watching it grow and finally moving in in 1999.  Mary and Dave were stalwarts of the process and continued to be during the 10 years we have lived there.  Dave watches over the buildings and grounds and for many years Mary has been the tender of the landscape.  While she was able, she was out there every day – pulling weeds, planting things and keeping an eye out to keep it gorgeous.  Nourishing the garden as it nourished her, as her gardening companion Lilith said.

But Mary was also a lover of fun!
In the planning and design stage of TAW, we made sure to have outlets on the front patios for the margarita blender – this is how Club 21 was born.

One of the things about cohousing that Mary and I both loved was the casual, easy socializing that can be done when we all live nearby.  One person sitting on their front patio could soon result in a small party with each neighbor bringing a snack or a bottle of wine (or margarita fixings!) to share – no planning, no driving.  Mary dubbed these informal gatherings Club 21.  When a small child would come running up to grab some food and run off again, Mary would teach them to “take just one” and then join the conversation before taking another.  This discouraged some of the kids but also resulted in some fine stories from some of the little ones.

I brought this margarita glass for Mary’s altar in honor of the many fun Club 21 gatherings we shared.

But the fun didn’t stop with Club 21.
Mary had decorations stored away someplace for every occasion – Christmas, Easter, Valentines Day – we always made a party of it.

Going off campus too.  Mary, want to go see the Mime Troupe?  Sure!  Want to go to the movies?  Sure!  Want to go to Sea Ranch for Thanksgiving?  Sure!  She was up for everything.  Mary really knew how to pack her life full of fun and adventure.  When I heard they were going to China, I wanted to go too.  Mary was an amazing traveling companion.  She took notes and documented every story and fact, and didn’t miss a single possible side trip.  She wanted it all and she got it!  Somewhere I have her documentation of our China trip, which I ought to post on her blog.

And she had such a way with words! I am sure going to miss her witty conversation, great sense of humor and stories about women’s history.  There will never be anyone quite like her. Here’s to Mary (lift margarita glass)

Saturday, March 6, 2010

A Celebration of Mary's Life - March 6

All are invited to a celebration of Mary's life on March 6 from 3:00 to 6:30 or 7:00.  The first part will be a program of speakers, slides and videos telling about Mary's remarkable life.  This will be followed by a party with food and drink - just the way Mary would have liked it.

Event is at the Finley Center in Santa Rosa at the corner of West College and Stony Point Road.

It would be helpful if you would click on this Evite link and let us know if you are coming.

Women’s history once more, with feeling by Susan Swartz


Women’s history once more, with feeling



by Susan Swartz
Published: Wednesday, March 3, 2010 1:05 PM PST in the Sonoma West Times and News
Why do we have to keep dredging up women’s history? Why do we need all of March to talk about it? I mean, after all, that was then, this is now.

Can’t we just move on? We’ve got Hillary. We’ve got Nancy. We win Olympic medals. Women make history all the time. Yes, but we still have a couple of thousand years of male-dominated history to balance.

Thirty years ago a group of women in Sonoma County started doing the research on “where were the women?” and strove to do no less than rewrite, edit and fill in the blanks in history books. The Sonoma County Women’s History Project blossomed into the national women’s history project and March became women’s history month, recognized in all states.

One founder of the Women’s History Project was the late Mary Ruthsdotter of Sebastopol. Mary died this winter and her memorial was fittingly planned for this celebrated month. It will be Saturday at 3 p.m. at the Finley Community Center in Santa Rosa.

Mary really knew her history and would talk about the gutsy women of the past like old friends she’d just had over for coffee. One she described as “totally cool” was Jeannette Rankin from Montana, the first woman elected to Congress and who dared to vote against America entering World War I. “You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake,” said Rankin — suffragist, peace activist and Republican.

Bay Area filmmaker Louise Vance claims Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the women’s rights organizer, for her favorite. She tells the story of Stanton growing up and hearing her father, a judge, tell women who were beaten by their husbands that they couldn’t run away.

“The law supported her being recaptured and returned to him,” said Vance, adding that Stanton vowed from then on “to tear out all the pages in her father’s law books that made women cry.”

Vance has made a film called “Seneca Falls” that launches this month on PBS television stations across the country. It’s about America’s first women’s rights convention in 1848, a huge public protest by radicals demanding that women be freed from their social, political and legal slavery. It’s barely mentioned in history books.

The film follows a theater troupe of teenage girls from San Francisco who went to Seneca Falls in 1998 to perform a play at the 150th anniversary of the women’s convention.

When Vance field-tested the film last year she showed it to junior high and high school girls in Ohio. They were angered by what they saw and told Vance they had never spent one minute on women’s history in school. Same thing happened when she showed it to a group of high school girls in San Francisco.

It’s because what women were doing then wasn’t valued enough to be written down. Getting the vote was a huge story but there was so much more going on in terms of women’s rights. “How about the fact that it was once legal in some states to whip your wife,” said Vance.

What about women not being able to inherit property? Or not being allowed to go to college? Mary Ruthsdotter’s grandmother told her, “Some men used to think women belonged to them like their cows and pigs.”

So, yeah, we have to keep acknowledging our history.

And Vance has another idea. She wants to find a legislator who will push for a national bill mandating that women’s history be taught in all public schools.

Imagine the squeals and growls over that idea from those who still haven’t learned how to share.

Susan Swartz is an author and journalist in Sebastopol. You can also read her at www.juicytomatoes.com and hear her Another Voice commentary on KRCB-FM radio on Fridays. Email is susan@juicytomatoes.com.

From Jean Richards, Commissioner (retired), Monterey County Commission on the Status of Women

I will be there in thought today.  Mary will always be among us for certain!  In fact, I am showing Adelante Mujeres on Tuesday.  It is a great video and she put so much effort into it.  I first met Mary in the 90s at an Association for California Commissions for Women conference in Northern California.  Mary gave a great presentation and lit the women's history fire for many commissioners.  We have been spreading the word each March ever since!  What a fantastic treasure she was and her work will continue to inspire us.  If it can be done I would love to see a portion of one of her lectures posted on YouTube.  It would certainly bring comfort to those of us who miss her so.  When I put womens history in youtube's finder a few women pop up but I want Mary there, if it can be done.  Condolences to Mary's family and enjoy those wonderful memories.  Jean Richards, Commissioner (retired), Monterey County Commission on the Status of Women

Sunday, February 14, 2010

A Message from Doris Weatherford – Historical Consultant to the National Women’s History Museum and a long-time friend of Mary.



On behalf of the National Women’s History Museum, I wish to extend sincere sympathies to everyone there, especially to her mother, Ruth, whom she honored with her name change many years ago, and to her daughter Alice.  Alice, she spoke of you with the pride that mothers have for accomplished daughters.  Mary understood the value of grandmothers and mothers and daughters yet to come, and those personal links underscored much of her public work. 

And of course, you, Dave – Mary and I spoke several times of how fortunate each of us has been in our choice of husbands!  From the bottom of my heart, thank you for being the kind of man who understands and supports and can be depended upon to do the right thing, whether that thing is great or small.  I have particularly fond memories of when Mary, you, and your Uncle John came to dinner at our house -- and I want to recognize him, too, and acknowledge again the annual John Crawford Art Festival in Ruskin, Florida, which he endowed.

Such memorializing was always on Mary’s mind, even before she became ill.  She was driven by a powerful force to insist that women especially be memorialized, that the achievements of American women be remembered like those of men.  As everyone listening to this knows, she spent her life “writing women back into history” as a founder of the National Women’s History Project. 

After we became friends, I reminded Mary that our first communication had been when she sent a letter to my publisher, Prentice Hall, which they forwarded to me, in which she heatedly protested my omission of the National Women’s History Project from my American Women’s History: A-Z.  I called her and apologized, explaining that because NWHP was only about a decade old at the time, I didn’t yet think of it as “history.”  She did, though.  She knew that Women’s History Month and the Project would succeed and that NWHP itself would become history.

After that rather rough beginning, we became good – if geographically distant – friends.  Mary liked to write and wrote well. I always looked forward to seeing something from her, whether it came from the post office – as did her annual holiday cards – or later, by e-mail.  Our exchanges included oddball questions that few others would find worth pondering, but they showed the depth of her interest in women’s history.

Once she raised the topic of colors and flowers in the suffrage movement: was it true, she asked, that white and purple were the colors and white lilies the flower?  The creativeness of the query sent me back to the thousands of pages in the six-volume History of Woman Suffrage.  The last three volumes were written or co-written by Susan Anthony’s press secretary, Ida Husted Harper -- a Californian who shared with Mary and me an interest in color and flowers -- and there was a surprising amount of information to satisfy our curiosity.  Delaware suffragists, for example, used jonquils as their symbol, and when women demonstrated at the 1916 National Democratic Convention in St. Louis, they created a “golden lane” of yellow ribbons and carried yellow parasols.  Only Mary would ask a question like that, though.  She was unique.

We also enjoyed each other’s company at the 150th anniversary of the women’s rights movement in Seneca Falls, New York.  I wrote a book aimed at that 1998 event – which actually was published near you, by ABC-Clio in Santa Barbara.  When I listened to my phone messages later, I was thrilled to hear one from Mary, saying that she had run through the Rochester airport looking for a pencil to mark things in the book.  It made me so happy to know that she -- who knew so much about women’s history -- found pencil-worthy information.  Mary always was learning and loving to learn and more than willing to share ideas and sources. 

One of her great characteristics, in fact, was her openness about including others on whatever agenda she was promoting.   I still can see her standing at the front of a bus as NWHP participants did a tour of women’s sites in Washington, DC.  We were on our way to the house where Mary McLeod Bethune lived after Franklin Roosevelt appointed her as the first African-American to head a federal agency.  Mary (Ruthsdotter, not Bethune) explained all this and then spotted me and said something like:  “You’re from Florida, Doris, and she was from Florida.  Get up here and add to what I’ve said.”  Like Eleanor Roosevelt, Mary was a natural networker who immediately grasped who should know what about whom – and she brought it all together to selflessly promote women’s history.

After her retirement from NWHP, she became very supportive of the National Women’s History Museum, which plans to build a museum dedicated to American women on the National Mall in Washington.  Mary contributed generously to NWHM, and her family has asked that others do the same.  NWHM is proud to include Mary on its Honor Roll listed online and in its Chronicle of American Women.  Both of these will be part of the museum when it is completed – and this is the first museum authorized by Congress and located in our nation’s capital.  It is right and fitting that Mary would be named in it.

From afar, my love and good wishes to all who loved Mary Ruthsdotter.  I shall memorialize her for the rest of my life.

Friday, February 12, 2010

Mary's report from WOMBAT mountain bike camp 11/03

I'm just back from WOMBAT camp (WOmen's Bicycle and Tea Society), run bythe zany champeeeeeon mountainbiker, Jacquie Phelan. Three days, 2nights at the Saratoga Youth Hostel, and a grand adventure. What did Ilearn,you ask?I learned I am fast. Or at least fast enuff not to feel slow aroundpeople like me. And I now know I've got sufficient stamina, too. Campwas fun, and I did learn a lot. And I've got abrasions, small holes,and bruises that prove I warn't no woos, either. At one point I did acomplete face-plant in the duff, so I've got red patches on my cheeksand chin this morning -- red badges of courage? I still am not adept athairpin turns, but I can describe how to do them as well as the nextperson, and someday I'm bound to catch on and complete one withouthop-hop-hoping downhill on one foot instead! Meanwhile, I can wow allthe little kids by doing a dramatic skid and then riding off thedirection I came from. Maybe I can, I mean. I've done it once, whichI'll be reminiscing about often.How was the weather? Glad you asked! You know me as tending to definea good time partly by how agreeable the weather is/was. Well. Ithailed so hard the first afternoon that one of the roads in the area(Santa Cruz mountains) was closed, but we rode anyway. The rest of thetime it was COLD but dry. Fortunately I'd brought hi-tech undies, but myfingertips nearly froze off on the cold brake handles, which I stayed inCONSTANT contact with.The class usually has 8 women, but Hallowe'en cut into the numbers whichwere to be 3, but one bailed out so then there were two. The otherwoman had driven down from Idaho, where she does road races now andthen. Shewas 54, in about the same condition I'm in, so we were well matchedthere. Jacquie Phelan is in her late '40s, has about 1% body fat andmuscle galore, is funnnny, a compulsive talker, very daring, and reallyreally good as a teacher. With just two of us in the class we got allthe attention we could want. "OK, now - PASS ME!!" Jacquie'd say as Iteetered along a single-track groove on a steep hillside, and my gawd Icould do it! We rode one long and lovely trail through a state park, the lateafternoon light filtering through the madrone and maples -- lovelylovely. It ended on a grueling uphill (of course), and as I crested andsaw we were back on the road I rang my bell with great delight, grabbingthe attention of the man sitting in a car right there reading, with allhis windows rolled up. Seemed odd to me, but oh well. So, off we rodemerrily toward our car. And then the State Parks cops showed up, billyclubs in their holster thangs, ticket book in hand... Turns out bikesaren't allowed on those trails. THAT's what that sign meant! But as"girl" can be held against a person, it should also work in favor and itdid this time: they let us go with aonly a stern warning. We were contrite and haaappy again. You'd havelet us off, too, huh Liz?!Now I'm back riding my desk, promising to send i.d. theft information tothis person and passing on that legislation idea to the next.Meanwhile, scenes from the great outdoors will be playing right behindmy eyelids!Dessert beckons. I hope to see you soon, here or there, Liz.xoxox,Mary Ruthsdotter, Bachelorette of Finesse degree holder

Thoughts on hearing of the passing of Mary 1/8/10

MARY RUTHSDOTTER
10/14/44 – 1/8/10

My friend Mary Ruthsdotter passed this afternoon. She was 65 and we had been friends for over 30 years. I met Mary through a mutual friend in around 1977. She had just moved her husband Dave and daughter Alice to Sonoma County from Los Angeles in pursuit of a better quality of life. They rented a house in Windsor and had a beautiful garden. They later bought a home in Santa Rosa and then moved 10 years ago to a co-housing community in Sebastopol that they helped found.

Mary and Dave’s home became a destination for me every few months. In summer we picked blackberries, went to the county fair, and canoed on the Russian River. We traded gardening tips and political opinions. Over the years I’d rent homes on the river for a weekend or week and Mary and Dave would come for dinner or a hike or boating afternoon. Mary was generous with time as a friend; her visits were not 30 minute affairs, but long afternoons or overnights with trips to the bakery in the morning. We shared a love of fresh food and savored the latest seasonal fruit. I often came home from a visit with a bag of fresh picked fruit or vegetables from their garden.

We liked the county fair for a number of reasons. The Sonoma County fair featured a central garden exhibit each year, organized around a theme. It might be a 3 story high dragon (one of my favorites) or a Disney story. It was always interesting and sometimes spectacular. We liked the sheep dog trials; we liked the county fair junk food and were quite particular about how the cinnamon buns with frosting were supposed to taste. One year Mary got tickets for the rodeo and we wore western shirts and went. Mary was generally up for anything and I’m surprised we never went to a tracker pull. We did go to the classic car show and vote on our favorites. Dave, who’d owned a car body shop for many years and actually knows about cars, admired how they were put together; Mary and I admired the paint jobs, especially the flames down the sides kind. Mary and Alice won prizes at the county fair. Alice for making a doll house; Mary for grapevine pruning. These are the ones I know about; there are likely others.

Mary was a feminist and allowed her beliefs to shape her life. She was one of the founders of the women’s history project and spent years traveling the country advocating for women’s history and training others to share our stories. The first grants to start the history project were written on Mary’s dining room table at the rented house in Windsor. I have tee shirts, posters and a wealth of understanding from my years visiting Mary at work and hearing about her trips and projects. During my last visit with her 10 days ago, I had a cup of tea with her and selected a women’s history project mug to drink from. Besides the history project work, Mary was chair of the Sonoma County Commission on the Status of Women, an aide to her local assembly member, active in ecological and conservation groups. In retirement, she’d begun exploring groups she wanted to volunteer with, looking at the library, the open space groups and others. Her illness took away much of her energy and stamina and cheated us of the leadership she would’ve provided in the last decades of her life.

Mary grew up traveling because her father worked for what I think of as the foreign service. As an adult, she loved to travel and she and Dave (and Alice as a child) truly traveled the world. They spent months in Latin America, Asia and Europe. After she because ill, Mary still managed trips to China, India, Japan, Australia and the US southwest.

In December, I told her I was planning a trip to Oxford and she pulled out Rick Steve’s map and put post-it arrows on a half dozen spots she and Dave had visited and I should see. She was the perfect person to talk about travel with; she was interested in spending time in and getting to know a country. She read about and watched videos about travel and was planning a trip to see her aunt Virginia in the southwest this spring. We’d also been discussing Montana and she’d been looking at historic lodges to stay in.

I went on the trip to China with Mary and Dave and I couldn’t keep up with her. If there was an extra outing: to a show, for instance, she went. I stayed back and rested one night when she and Dave went to the theater; Mary bought a mask which hangs on the wall in their home now.

Although she didn’t brag about it, Mary had an artistic side. She had a great sense of color and used it to paint the inside of their home, sew, do stained glass, pottery and garden.

About 5 years ago, before she was even 60, Mary was diagnosed with multiple myleoma, a tough kind of blood cancer. I remember when she told me she was ill. She was sitting in their back patio; she was still very healthy and well, but she told me she had blood cancer as I arrived for a visit. She and Dave had been at a retreat, as I recall, and she screamed in pain. The cancer had eaten through a part of her back. It would go on to attack her ribs, shoulders, skull and hip. Radiation and chemotherapy beat it back and allowed her to travel, garden and do lots of things she loved doing for several years.

But this fall, she developed congestive heart disease and spent 3 spells in the hospital in the last 3 months. Today, she was getting ready to leave after a 3 day stay. She and Dave were waiting for the doctor to discharge her. She ate lunch and was walking around the ward with a nurse. She was happy to be going home, joking with the nurse and other patients by waving a “royal” cupped hand as she passed by. Then she stopped, said “oh no” and collapsed. She could not be revived and her cardiologist suspects she died from a blood clot to the brain because her collapse was so quick and complete.

Less than a year before she was diagnosed with multiple myleoma, Mary sent me an email titled “Mary’s big adventure.” It was the story of her going to women’s mountain bike camp in the Santa Cruz mountains. She was older than the other students but held her own, returning home banged up but happy. Mary loved bike riding. She was also a dare devil and especially liked riding carnival rides that make you throw up or going fast down a hill on her bike and occasionally wiping out.

Mary and Dave have been family to me most of my adult life. We have watched each other’s children grow up, had lots of adventures; shared some heartache and hard times. I could count on Mary to be proud of my accomplishments, but mainly to love me as I am. She and Dave came to my birthday parties and drove to Oakland the day my family purchased our home. She defined friendship to me.

In my refrigerator are two blocks of tofu. Mary and I discussed a receipe I have for coconut encrusted tofu at our last visit. In an email exchange 5 days ago, right before her last trip to the hospital by ambulance, we made a plan for me to bring my marinated and pressed tofu to her home for us to cook. On my bed is my cookbook with the recipe. In my car are children’s games and puzzles that I packed a few days ago. She’d accepted my offer of their loan for the upcoming visit of her daughter and oldest grandson next week.

It is hard to interrupt this friendship. The plans to make sugar skulls for day of the dead next year, to go to Montana or Arizona; to watch movies about the UK in preparation for my trip; to tour the grounds at Two Acre Wood and comment on what needs pruning, what to replace or add. To try our hands at topiary or to taste test waffle recipes.

Dave called me after work this evening and I was in my car. I came home, talked to him, and then decided to go out to the planetarium. I’d been wanting to see a show there on the Maya and their astronomy and math. I went and also took advantage of Friday night dinner there too. This is exactly the kind of outing Mary would’ve enjoyed.

Mary was angry at being ill, and also overwhelmed by the relentlessness of her ever increasing and changing medical problems. I’m angry at losing her and not getting to be old together. After all these years, I will not have my friend to retire near to. Even so, I am so grateful to have had her as my friend.

Liz Hendrickson

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Gardening with Mary

Every time I work in the garden at Two Acre Wood that Mary nourished and that nourished Mary so much, I think of her and miss her.

When she was well enuff for us to work together there, we talked of everything from Susan B. Anthony to Michelle Obama as well as our own lives and histories.  I sure miss those talks.

So glad to have known her, and so much appreciate all her work in  the world and the garden.

Lilith

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Mary Ruthsdotter Memorial Blogspot

We have set up this site for Mary's friends and family to share stories, memories, feelings, photos, whatever you like. Please add to it.  If you are not yet an author for this blog, let me know and I will make you one.  Click on 0 Comments or 1 comment or whatever is below each post to add a comment.

Some nice thoughts from Mary's friends

"We have lost a bright star in our lives.  I can only hope she is now regularly having tea with Susan, Elizabeth and Alice (for starters!)."


"quote from the Women's Words Daily, 'life loves to be taken by the lapel and told,"I am with you kid,. Let's go!' ~Maya Angelou
I wonder if Mary picked that to put on the calendar, sounds like her. And she DID "go"."
--- from Ampa Drinia (AKA Aunt Virginia)

"It's hard to imagine a world without her."

"We come. We go. And we remember. Mary will continue in my heart..............."

"She was a dynamo with a big heart."


Sunday, January 17, 2010

Travels With Mary

Mary and I traveled together frequently conducting teacher training workshops for the National Women’s History Project, attending project director meetings for our grant-funded projects and to attend educational equity conferences. Both being fun-loving and adventurous people, we always discovered great restaurants and found ways to have fun in any city, sometimes staying an extra day or two. In Oregon, we spent the night at the Timberline Lodge on Mt. Hood and toured the Hood River valley. In Boise we went skiing twice (hitch-hiking to the slopes the second day when we discovered the shuttle did not run on Sunday). On a trip to New Orleans, we took a red eye flight so we could have maximum time, caught two Mardi Gras parades and ate at as many famous restaurants as we could fit in. We even had fun in Minnesota in the dead of winter.
One year the NCSEE conference was held in Oahu, Hawaii. Mary and I went a few days early and packed in as much exploring as possible. We lay on the beach and ate a plate lunch from a truck, took hula lessons at Wiamea Falls, watched the surfers on the North shore, ate pineapple at the Dole visitors center, climbed Diamond Head, visited the Aquarium, snorkeled at Hanauma Bay and body surfed at Waianae – all in two days before the conference began!
Another memorable travel adventure with Mary was the time we were hired by the Maine State Department of Education to conduct a workshop for teachers, to be held at a very fancy resort on the coast of Maine. On the way, driving from Portland, ME, we encountered a thunder storm so intense we had to pull off the road, but, by the time we got to the coast, the weather had cleared. We were each housed in a separate one bedroom cabin with a lovely view of the water. Fabulous meals were served in the resort dining room. (Lobster anytime you wanted!) The workshop was well received, as usual. From there we went up the coast and spent a few days exploring the legendary Maine coastline. It was on this trip that I discovered lawn sheep, and brought one home in my suitcase. We also brought home live lobsters which we cooked for a marvelous feast.
Another project that put us on the road together was gathering historical photos for the Women in American Life Video series that Mary and I produced for the NWHP. This was a project Mary and I worked on for several years, researching and writing the scripts, then doing the primary photo research on a long trip to D.C. and New York. We took with us an entire copy camera set-up with lights and several dozen rolls of film. Astoundingly, we were allowed to set up shop in the National Archives and Library of Congress where we copied hundreds of historical photographs. I would search for photos in the drawers to illustrate the script and bring them to Mary who was making photographic copies as fast as she could. We must have shot hundreds of pictures that way, using a special black and white Polaroid slide film, which we developed each night to be sure we had what we needed. Then we took the train to New York, where we visited the photo archives of the Associated Press and meeting with photographers who had covered the early women’s movement events on the east coast, a veritable treasure trove of material for the later years we were covering.
On a second trip for this same project, we went to Cambridge to do research at the Schlesinger Library at Radcliff, staying with a woman who had attended one of the NWHP’s teacher training conferences in Santa Rosa. To our delight, she taught Chinese cooking classes at her home, and we were able to attend one of them and share the feast. Research at Radcliff was excellent, as that was the largest women’s history library and archives in the country. We also drove up to Smith College to meet the archivist at the Sophia Smith Library, also a great collection of women’s history archives. On these trips we were able to look at the personal papers of Alice Paul and the Woman’s Party, whose office we also visited, as well as many other treasures rarely seen by the public. (I must say we were a little appalled by how lax the security was at the National Archives and Library of Congress. We were allowed to take anything we wanted out of the files and no one paid any attention to whether or not we put it back. We did, of course!) That was an absolutely amazing and grueling trip, but Mary and I had a wonderful time together.
My travels with Mary were some of the best adventures of my life and will always be my fondest memories of our 20 years of working together. - Bonnie Eisenberg

Friday, January 15, 2010

Obit in Sonoma West Times and news


Co-founder of Women’s History Project dies at 65





Mary Ruthsdotter and her husband Dave Crawford.

Local activist fought for equal rights for women

by George Snyder
Sonoma West Staff Writer
Published: Wednesday, January 13, 2010 2:01 PM PST
SEBASTOPOL – Memorial services are being planned for Mary Ruthsdotter, a Sebastopol-based feminist activist and a co-founder of  the National Women’s History Project.

Ruthsdotter, 65, died January 8 in Santa Rosa and was one of four Sonoma County women who began the project as a path to the acknowledgment of women ignored by history.

Ruthsdotter, who had battled multiple myeloma following retirement in 2004....


http://www.sonomawest.com/articles/2010/01/15/sonoma_west_times_and_news/news/doc4b4e379eae142208864723.txt

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Mary's page at the National Women's History Museum

Mary was a supporter from the start of the new effort to build a Women's History Museum in Washington, DC.  Here is their chronicle page for Mary:  http://www.nwhm.org/Chronicles/Ruthsdotter.html

If you are considering a donation in her memory, this is a good place.

From the National Women's History Project




Remembering Mary Ruthsdotter  (1944 - 2010)
Our friend and co-founder, Mary Ruthsdotter, passed away on January 8th.  Mary was the ultimate women's history convert.  The work she did to ensure that women's history would be recognized, honored, and celebrated is a great gift to all of us.
Mary Ruthsdotter was born on October 14, 1944, in Fairfield, Iowa, Iowa.  Her family was "strong Midwest stock," and Mary followed in the footsteps of her mother Ruth and grandmother Esther.  Both women were smart and independent, and Mary was no different. 
Mary's father was a pilot in the U.S. Marine Corps, and the family moved to many new places. She has lived in Arizona, California, Florida, North Carolina, Texas, Virginia, and overseas in Taiwan. 
 Mary attended UCLA in the early 1970s and threw herself into those exciting times at the beginning of the feminist movement.  Mary was determined to raise her daughter Alice to be brave and bold.  Mary and husband Dave Crawford traveled with four-year-old Alice through South America for several months.  She also helped Alice be fearless about math, unlike her own experience in school, when girls were "not supposed to" be good in math.
So Mary was a feminist and activist from early on.  But it was when she moved to Sonoma County, California, California, in 1977 that she learned about women's history.  She went to a slideshow presented by Molly MacGregor, Bette Morgan, and Paula Hammett.  As Mary later said, "Seeing all those pictures of so many women involved in such momentous events was an awakening.  Women had a long proud history which had been invisible in my schooling. Virtually all the accomplishments and contributions of people like me - women, half the world's population! -- had been blatantly ignored!"   
Mary became passionate about bringing women's history into public consciousness.  She was a volunteer embroiderer for Judy Chicago's art installation, "The Dinner Party."  And along with MacGregor, Morgan, Hammett, and Maria Cuevas, she co-founded the National Women's History Project (NWHP) in 1980.  Her enthusiastic optimism, good humor, ever-expanding knowledge, and dedicated work added immensely to bringing women's history to wide attention. 
As Projects Director, Mary gained funding for materials for students, teachers, librarians, parents, workplace organizers, and the media.   She produced curriculum units, organizing guides, teacher training sessions, and videos on U.S. women's history.  She wrote thousands of press releases to promote women's history through radio, television, magazines, and newspapers throughout the nation When the Women's History Network was created in 1983, Mary linked historians, librarians, performers, and community organizers throughout the country.  She produced the quarterl! y "Network News," packed with facts, practical ideas, and program strategies.  These eight-page newsletters documented the exciting expansion of women's history in the late 20th century.
Largely because of Mary's efforts, the NWHP became the national clearinghouse for women's history, both in print and on the internet.  Mary built a library of over 6,000 books about women in U.S. history, and filled cabinets with articles and photographs. She and her husband Dave created two award-winning websites.  Mary was an expert at finding and delivering the information people wanted!    
We are grateful that among Mary Ruthsdotter's legacies are the women's history movement she helped create and the organization she co-founded. 
We extend our heart-felt condolences to Dave Crawford, Mary's husband of 46 years, and to her mother Ruth Moyer, to her daughter Alice and son-in-law Geoff, and grandsons Marcus and Ian, as well as to the rest of her family, and to her extraordinary network of friends. 
Her daughter, Alice, described Mary best when she wrote "my dear mother was an amazing gal, kick-ass activist, friend, maker of fun, spreader of wisdom - a truly remarkable rare bird indeed."
A memorial service and celebration of her life is being planned for a future date.

~The National Women's History Project

A truly remarkable rare bird


Mary Ruthsdotter
By Alice Crawford,  October, 2005
On the occasion of Mary being honored by Assemblywoman Pat Wiggins’ at Women in the Wine Country. http://www.wiggins4senate.com/kickoff.html
(Photo is of Mary's front yard)

While my mother was visiting me in Australia a few weeks back, we spent a morning lazing around chatting and reading the Sydney Morning Herald.  I remember Mom reading aloud a bit of an article in which a woman was described as being a “truly remarkable rare bird.”  Mom said something to me about how fine she thought it would be to be described in that fashion and, since then, I’ve often thought of how the phrase fits her very well indeed:  “a truly remarkable rare bird.” 

It’s not easy to spell out exactly what makes this fit her so well, precisely because there is so much about my mother that is remarkable and rare.  In my mind, the mixture of exuberance and STICK TO-IT-iveness that she brings to her work in the garden has become a kind of shorthand for what I so admire in her approach to life.  My mother is always cultivating something – in fact, she is constantly cultivating many things at once.  With an abundance of creative energy, she starts more projects in a day than many of us do in a month, and -- even more impressively -- she has the patience and the persistence to see the majority of them through. 

To be truly remarkable, a garden needs an imaginative vision that sees more possibilities in a plot of land than a rose bush here and a privet hedge there – it needs inspiration and verve.  To thrive, however, a garden needs loads of fairly unglamourous day-to-day maintenance.  In my mother’s garden, she has brought these talents and abilities together – collaborating with others to bring something delightful into the world. 

I see this same dynamic in many of the projects she has turned her hand to.   Her work with the Women’s History Project is a source of enormous pride for me, but is only one of so many bits of beauty she has created:  from the first days I remember, she has been throwing pots, making quilts, cooking feasts, throwing parties, fixing up drab apartments which she has painted to look like (surprise!) gardens, filling a neighborhood with trees by day, and “guerilla pruning” them by night, nurturing a marriage of over 40 years, raising a happy and appreciative daughter who turned out to be a real, live feminist herself after all when the tussles over high-heels and lipgloss were put aside, and working in a wide variety of fashions to create community and a more equitable world.  When I think of my mother, I think of the deceptively simple Buddhist maxim to “let a thousand flowers bloom.”  This is exactly what she does every day, in large and small ways, and is part of what makes her a “truly remarkable rare bird” indeed.  

Link to obituary in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat

http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20100111/ARTICLES/100119922/1052/OBITS?Title=Mary-Ruthsdotter&tc=ar

Monday, January 11, 2010

New Year's day, 2010


IMG_5743
Originally uploaded by Marty Roberts

Dave and Mary and friends - Connie and Jeff -  at our Two Acre Wood party on January 1, 2010.

Mary Ruthsdotter – 10/14/1944 to 1/8/2010

 Mary Ruthsdotter, women’s rights activist and long time Sonoma County resident, died January 8 at age 65.  Born in Fairfield, Iowa on October 14, 1944, she traveled extensively in her youth as part of a military family. She lived in places as far-flung as Cherry Point, NC and Taipei, Taiwan.  Ruthsdotter is survived by her husband of 46 years, Dave Crawford of Sebastopol, her mother Ruth Moyer, Santa Rosa, her daughter Alice Crawford, son in law Geoff Langdale and grandsons Marcus and Ian, all of Sydney Australia, as well as numerous relatives and friends.

Ruthsdotter was a founder of the National Women’s History Project (NWHP), past chair of the Sonoma County Commission on the Status of Women, an aide to state Assemblywoman (now State Senator) Pat Wiggins and a supporter and confidante to numerous progressive causes and politicians including Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey.

Ruthsdotter moved from Los Angeles to Sonoma County with her husband and daughter in 1977, attracted by the pristine environment and slower pace of life.  After living in Windsor and Santa Rosa, she and husband Dave Crawford were among the founders Two Acre Wood cohousing community in Sebastopol, where they have lived as active members for the past 10 years. 

Mary was dedicated to women’s history and feminism, changing her last name in 1978 from Pegau to Ruthsdotter, a name she created in honor of her mother Ruth Moyer.  She infused her political work with infectious enthusiasm, organizing an annual women’s history parade in Santa Rosa in 1979 which grew to include school marching bands and hundreds of participants. 

While active on the Commission on the Status of Women, Ruthsdotter also organized the Women’s Support Network, a non-profit organization, which sponsored the women’s history parades, as well as Brown Bag Readers’ Theatre, Women’s Voices News Journal and, for several years, the National Women’s History Project.

During her 15+ years on the staff of the NWHP, Ruthsdotter was the primary researcher and writer on women of historical importance and traveled around the country making presentations, training teachers and lobbying for the inclusion of women’s accomplishments into our nation’s history.  The Project designated National Women’s History Week in March, 1980, and prevailed on President Ronald Reagan to place March as National Women’s History Month on the US calendar.  Ruthsdotter was instrumental in the conception, research and writing of numerous posters, publications and multi-media resources published by the NWHP during her tenure there. She also created and diligently maintained the Women’s History Network, an affiliation of women’s history enthusiasts, educational equity officers and educators across the country.  She constantly wowed people with her encyclopedic recollection of women’s historic details.
In 2006-7, Ruthsdotter saw a longtime dream of hers come to fruition when, at her urging, Sonoma State University undertook a project to document the phenomenal early history of feminist activity in Sonoma County from the 1960s-1980s.  Mary conceived and inspired the idea and worked with Michelle Jolly (professor of history at Sonoma State University) who mobilized students in her classes to begin the work of gathering the stories.
In the first 18 months of work, members of the project conducted 49 interviews with activists, began to index coverage of women in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, analyzed the annual reports of the Sonoma County Commission on the Status of Women, and put together the first presentation of the project. (http://www.sonomawomenshistory.org/)

Ruthsdotter was active in Sonoma County politics, and served for 3 years as an aide to State Assemblywoman (now State Senator) Pat Wiggins.  She has been a constant advocate and supporter for qualified women running for office.

Following her retirement in 2004, she was diagnosed with multiple myeloma.  She successfully fought and contained this disease, but developed congestive heart failure in late 2009 and died suddenly at Kaiser Santa Rosa as she walked around the hospital unit in preparation for her discharge. 

According to her longtime friend Trynn, “It was Mary's mission in life to always have friends around.  The cohousing concept was in her blood from a very young age.  She knew there would always be people to have dinner with and to be there for each other.”  She never passed up the opportunity for a good conversation and cohousing dinners provided that opportunity.  The Two Acre Wood community became her extended family and is feeling the loss of one of their staunchest members.

One of Mary’s greatest pleasures after her retirement was to work in the cohousing landscape almost every day.  Her daughter Alice said, “When I think of my mother, I think of the deceptively simple Buddhist maxim to ‘let a thousand flowers bloom.’”

Her friends remember her as a loyal friend and a playmate that was always up for anything.  Her continuous thirst for knowledge made her a resource to all – especially for anything to do with women’s history.  Ruthsdotter’s joie de vivre included winning ribbons at the county fair for grapevine pruning, riding any roller coaster she encountered, traveling the world visiting 5 continents, and always making time for family and friends.

To her daughter Alice, “my dear mother was an amazing gal, kick-ass activist, friend, maker of fun, spreader of wisdom – a truly remarkable rare bird indeed.”

A memorial service and celebration of her life is being planned for a future date.  Donations in her memory can be sent to the new National Women’s History Museum in Washington, DC.:  National Women’s History Museum, 
Administrative Offices
, 205 S. Whiting Street, Suite 254, 
Alexandria, VA 22304



History gives historian her due



History gives historian her due

Published: Sunday, March 11, 2007 at 6:02 a.m.
Last Modified: Saturday, March 10, 2007 at 9:00 p.m.
Mary Crawford turned herself into Mary Ruthsdotter because there were too many other Mary Crawfords. Two at UCLA where she went to school and a sister-in-law.
"It felt like, take a number."
She had no problem with her first name. Mary fit her Midwestern solidness. But Crawford was her husband's name, and though she loves the man - they've been married for 42 years - she wanted something that belonged to her.
"Golly gee," she said. "First I was my father's property and then my husband's."
She legally changed to Ruthsdotter in 1978, a time when many women were morphing their identities into creative hybrids and shaking up the patrimony tradition.
Ruthsdotter seemed a natural because friends of her mother often commented, "You must be Ruth's daughter."
Then there's a Scandinavian tradition (although she's not Scandinavian) where people add "dotter" or "son" to a name, although usually the first part is a Leif or an Erick.
The name sensitivity served Mary when she and three other Sonoma County women started the National Women's History Project in 1980, which is all about names - of women ignored by history.
Mary's role was "to get the word out" to teachers, schoolkids, researchers, librarians and media around the country, which she did so well that the local project grew into a major national resource.
Each March, which is Women's History Month, the national organization comes up with a new list of not-to-be-missed women, and Mary Ruthsdotter is on this year's. Sitting in her Sebastopol kitchen, she's a bit embarrassed about the tribute. "It seems a little unseemly, for an organization to honor a founding member." But despite her reluctance and a recent bout with cancer, she'll go to Washington on March 21 to "some snazzy event" where she'll likely spend more time telling stories about the other honorees than herself.
Mary is a proud and loud feminist who comes from a line of un-proclaimed feminists. Mary's grandmother Esther once told Mary that some men thought women "belonged to them like their cows and pigs."
But Esther had her ways, insisting on going out to vote when she was hugely pregnant and should have properly stayed inside. Esther also raised three kids by herself after her husband took a government job and told her "he travels fastest who travels alone."
Mary's mother, Ruth, married to a Marine pilot, helped start new schools on two military bases and drove a Red Cross relief truck. "I was just a military wife," she said from her home near Chico, "but I felt I had to do something else."
Mary's daughter Alice, a university professor living in Australia with her husband and two sons, calls herself a third-wave feminist. "The core values of feminism," which she picked up pretty much by osmosis, "made as much compelling sense to me as the law of gravity," she said in an e-mail.
Mary scoffs at the off-and-on rumors that feminism is dead. "Those people are just plain mistaken. Ask any single woman about her access to credit or ask a married woman about having separate bank accounts. It's in the culture."
Daughter Alice acknowledges that progress can be questionable. She cites media stories "making a big drama about the low self-esteem of girls - their dieting, boy obsessions, Paris Hilton cheesiness and wearing heels to chemistry class."
But she thinks the real opportunities for women "in work, love and how they conduct their lives" are greater now "than any generation before them."
Put that in your history books.

Marty's personal collection of Mary pictures - click to play