Such wonderful, engaging stuff. Love reading about the 60’s and 70’s (I was 12 in ‘65). We were hearing about “women’s lib” not long after hearing about “Carnaby Street” and in my tough factory town these things all kind of melded together. So great to learn and unlearn and relive. So glad to be subscribed to to the most interesting surprising and lively Substack out there.!
Oh, my darling, I am so happy to be interesting! Thanks so much. Did you see the comment I made about "lib" in the caption under Kate's pic at the top? xxL
Yes, I did see that. That’s part of what I was responding to! How great to have had Kate Millett as a teacher acknowledging your value as a human and actually glad to be there teaching you! I get so much from your turns of phrase and your shifting ideas. I don’t always have time to read everything you post but what I do it’s so rewarding. Thank you..
"I could tell you about these moments in detail and with joy, but I want to hold you now and tell you about something more intangible. It was the feeling of being part of something that had risen up spontaneously. It had not risen up spontaneously. It had risen up at the crossroads of Yeah, I want to fuck you, too, but I’m sick of making coffee for you and posting your flyers. It had risen up from books written by Simone de Beauvoir and Betty Friedan."
Ah....this is like a pair of arms wrapping me up and bringing back so many memories. You are my people. I never thought 1968 would end, or if it would end, it would not be pretty. I could never have imagined in my wildest fantasies how far we would fall. But the power in this graph I've pulled lies in its emphasis on the whole idea of numbers. Strength in numbers. We've always known this, of course, but the current moment demands a re-envisioning of what those numbers would look like, what their focus would be, how they would decide to coalesce around a common purpose and aim. The time is absolutely now. What will we create that is new?
i love all of this so much. how lucky you were to have known kate millet so intimately! i can feel the spark of those times through your words. you amazing women.
I remember that TIME cover and have taken heart all by life from being found interesting by brave, brilliant, fiercely interesting people. I hope I have shone a light on the interesting-ness of others who thought they were nothing special. It’s a mitzvah, as is this scintillating essay.
This piece SO reminded me of my mother who was essentially one of very few feminists in the early 1970s in the Detroit Metro area. She left behind a treasure trove of her writings and even some audio cassettes. I turned one of them into a film called "Mother Lode." Maybe you'd like to see it? https://vimeo.com/816803537?share=copy
Thank you so much for this. I have to admit that, the past month or several weeks, I've been seeing your writing in my inbox and thinking "I can't do anything not political right now". The Elon Musk of it all is too horrifying. I'm reading nothing but Octavia Butler and political news. I clicked on this piece, for no real reason, and remembered you studied under Kate Millett. And then I remembered you're political, too, if not moment to moment news about the latest horrible thing. I'm also ... not sure I knew that people had to protest the New York Times to make them get rid of separate men's and women's job listings. I kind of thought when the Civil Rights Act was passed, newspapers just sort of "had to" stop doing that. I'm now coming to understand that there's no "had to". All positive change is achieved by people -- YOU! -- fighting for it. Thank you for everything you do.
Thanks for your comment, dear Sy. I'm always political, in my mind at least. Everything is Personal is a joke that means everything is political--we are social beings shaped all the time by powers around us. I will never comment on the people you read about. They are profoundly uninteresting to me. I'm doing the work I can to encourage freedom and more circulation in the world for women. Women are the focus of my politics. Comedy, too, expresses the deepest sense of what we value and what we laugh at.
Eyewitness comment: Kate Millett and I shared an office at Barnard College during Laurie's days there. Laurie writes with love and reliability, despite her comments about memory. Kate was a wonder. Catharine (Kate) Stimpson
Hi Kate, I just sent you an email about the post and about you as well. Eyewitness comment on the brilliant powers of Catherine Stimpson. You and Kate M and I were all at that Now meeting where Betty Friedan chided Ti-Grace Atkinson for visiting Valerie Solanas in jail, as she was waiting trial for shooting Andy Warhol. One of the great and in retrospect funny and inevitable fissures in the movement was waking up, whether feminists would be good girl revolutionaries or bad girl revolutionaries. Richard was just talking about the way great teachers, among them you, shape the lives of their students for a lifetime, far beyond our time in the classroom. When I read old notebooks, you might be surprised by how often I refer to something you did or said, after our time as student and teacher. I hope you know how important your dearness and kindness and utterly original self have been to me. Love, L
Great teachers like Kate make those they touch see the world in a new way that stays with them forever and is in everything they say and do from then on. Lucky you.
You make those days come back to me so vividly! The consciousness raising groups and one where my group invited our mothers to come on Mother’s Day and the great divide we felt. And Kate! And so much more, Laurie.
The mothers! Lee Krasner is moving and ornery at the same time about the position of her generation of talented and striving women still thrown under the bus.
So onward. Richard was just up here talking about how in both our cases our educations gave us our lives. He was saying it's not just localized in the time we spend actively learning with teachers, it radiates out to a framework of reasoning and valuing freedom and energy and creativity for a lifetime. xxL
Thanks for this too. That was a period of turmoil in my life, deaths and divorces and smashed dreams. I was a member of the Women's Salon in Westbeth, and had my first story published, it was all such a good idea. But so little that was really good came out of it. I couldn't read those men you mention, or watch the movies. I walked out of Goddard twice. They made me ill. I read Virginia Woolf and that was a joy. And Marguerite Young and Anais Nin, and that was a joy until I realized so much of it was lies. I wish I'd known Millett.
Thank you so much, Laurie, for putting into words what I felt back then—thinking I was the only one—as I forced myself to “understand” Godard, Miller, etc., dutifully viewing and reading. I loved Kate, too (a sister Minnesotan, by the way). Thank you for reminding us of the joy of joining together in those times. A joy that is coming back to me in glimmers as I gather with other women ready to fight again.
For the record: Katherine Murray Millett was born on September 14, 1934, to James Albert and Helen (née Feely) Millett in Saint Paul, Minnesota. ... Of Irish Catholic heritage, Kate Millett attended parochial schools in Saint Paul throughout her childhood.
Laurie Stone, your posts track a wavering line between history, stream-of-consciousness, passion and magical realism. I enjoy and love them. Thank you so very much. I wish I’d been reading you for years. 🕉️🪬
Such wonderful, engaging stuff. Love reading about the 60’s and 70’s (I was 12 in ‘65). We were hearing about “women’s lib” not long after hearing about “Carnaby Street” and in my tough factory town these things all kind of melded together. So great to learn and unlearn and relive. So glad to be subscribed to to the most interesting surprising and lively Substack out there.!
Oh, my darling, I am so happy to be interesting! Thanks so much. Did you see the comment I made about "lib" in the caption under Kate's pic at the top? xxL
Yes, I did see that. That’s part of what I was responding to! How great to have had Kate Millett as a teacher acknowledging your value as a human and actually glad to be there teaching you! I get so much from your turns of phrase and your shifting ideas. I don’t always have time to read everything you post but what I do it’s so rewarding. Thank you..
"I could tell you about these moments in detail and with joy, but I want to hold you now and tell you about something more intangible. It was the feeling of being part of something that had risen up spontaneously. It had not risen up spontaneously. It had risen up at the crossroads of Yeah, I want to fuck you, too, but I’m sick of making coffee for you and posting your flyers. It had risen up from books written by Simone de Beauvoir and Betty Friedan."
Ah....this is like a pair of arms wrapping me up and bringing back so many memories. You are my people. I never thought 1968 would end, or if it would end, it would not be pretty. I could never have imagined in my wildest fantasies how far we would fall. But the power in this graph I've pulled lies in its emphasis on the whole idea of numbers. Strength in numbers. We've always known this, of course, but the current moment demands a re-envisioning of what those numbers would look like, what their focus would be, how they would decide to coalesce around a common purpose and aim. The time is absolutely now. What will we create that is new?
i love all of this so much. how lucky you were to have known kate millet so intimately! i can feel the spark of those times through your words. you amazing women.
We share the same spark and sparkle, my dear friend.
❤️
This was my generation of women,and still is
xxL
I remember that TIME cover and have taken heart all by life from being found interesting by brave, brilliant, fiercely interesting people. I hope I have shone a light on the interesting-ness of others who thought they were nothing special. It’s a mitzvah, as is this scintillating essay.
I needed what you refer to from women . . . not people. Not that there's anything wrong with people.
This piece SO reminded me of my mother who was essentially one of very few feminists in the early 1970s in the Detroit Metro area. She left behind a treasure trove of her writings and even some audio cassettes. I turned one of them into a film called "Mother Lode." Maybe you'd like to see it? https://vimeo.com/816803537?share=copy
Thank you!
This was just thrilling to read. No one writes about the messiness that is life with your clarity.
Thank you. High praise.
Thank you so much for this. I have to admit that, the past month or several weeks, I've been seeing your writing in my inbox and thinking "I can't do anything not political right now". The Elon Musk of it all is too horrifying. I'm reading nothing but Octavia Butler and political news. I clicked on this piece, for no real reason, and remembered you studied under Kate Millett. And then I remembered you're political, too, if not moment to moment news about the latest horrible thing. I'm also ... not sure I knew that people had to protest the New York Times to make them get rid of separate men's and women's job listings. I kind of thought when the Civil Rights Act was passed, newspapers just sort of "had to" stop doing that. I'm now coming to understand that there's no "had to". All positive change is achieved by people -- YOU! -- fighting for it. Thank you for everything you do.
Thanks for your comment, dear Sy. I'm always political, in my mind at least. Everything is Personal is a joke that means everything is political--we are social beings shaped all the time by powers around us. I will never comment on the people you read about. They are profoundly uninteresting to me. I'm doing the work I can to encourage freedom and more circulation in the world for women. Women are the focus of my politics. Comedy, too, expresses the deepest sense of what we value and what we laugh at.
"I'm always political, in my mind at least." In ours as well.
Eyewitness comment: Kate Millett and I shared an office at Barnard College during Laurie's days there. Laurie writes with love and reliability, despite her comments about memory. Kate was a wonder. Catharine (Kate) Stimpson
Hi Kate, I just sent you an email about the post and about you as well. Eyewitness comment on the brilliant powers of Catherine Stimpson. You and Kate M and I were all at that Now meeting where Betty Friedan chided Ti-Grace Atkinson for visiting Valerie Solanas in jail, as she was waiting trial for shooting Andy Warhol. One of the great and in retrospect funny and inevitable fissures in the movement was waking up, whether feminists would be good girl revolutionaries or bad girl revolutionaries. Richard was just talking about the way great teachers, among them you, shape the lives of their students for a lifetime, far beyond our time in the classroom. When I read old notebooks, you might be surprised by how often I refer to something you did or said, after our time as student and teacher. I hope you know how important your dearness and kindness and utterly original self have been to me. Love, L
Great teachers like Kate make those they touch see the world in a new way that stays with them forever and is in everything they say and do from then on. Lucky you.
You have also been a great teacher to me, dearest lamb wolf. Lucky me so many times. xxL
You make those days come back to me so vividly! The consciousness raising groups and one where my group invited our mothers to come on Mother’s Day and the great divide we felt. And Kate! And so much more, Laurie.
The mothers! Lee Krasner is moving and ornery at the same time about the position of her generation of talented and striving women still thrown under the bus.
God, this is gorgeous! It takes me back. It takes me aback. and so - onward! Thanks so much. So very much
So onward. Richard was just up here talking about how in both our cases our educations gave us our lives. He was saying it's not just localized in the time we spend actively learning with teachers, it radiates out to a framework of reasoning and valuing freedom and energy and creativity for a lifetime. xxL
Thanks for this too. That was a period of turmoil in my life, deaths and divorces and smashed dreams. I was a member of the Women's Salon in Westbeth, and had my first story published, it was all such a good idea. But so little that was really good came out of it. I couldn't read those men you mention, or watch the movies. I walked out of Goddard twice. They made me ill. I read Virginia Woolf and that was a joy. And Marguerite Young and Anais Nin, and that was a joy until I realized so much of it was lies. I wish I'd known Millett.
Thank you so much, Laurie, for putting into words what I felt back then—thinking I was the only one—as I forced myself to “understand” Godard, Miller, etc., dutifully viewing and reading. I loved Kate, too (a sister Minnesotan, by the way). Thank you for reminding us of the joy of joining together in those times. A joy that is coming back to me in glimmers as I gather with other women ready to fight again.
Fantastic to hear, dear Carla, and thanks for supporting my work. As you know, paid support is much more than money. xxL
" She was a well brought up midwestern girl."
For the record: Katherine Murray Millett was born on September 14, 1934, to James Albert and Helen (née Feely) Millett in Saint Paul, Minnesota. ... Of Irish Catholic heritage, Kate Millett attended parochial schools in Saint Paul throughout her childhood.
Love this. I read Kate Millet in the early 80s just after leving university and it was life-changing.
Laurie Stone, your posts track a wavering line between history, stream-of-consciousness, passion and magical realism. I enjoy and love them. Thank you so very much. I wish I’d been reading you for years. 🕉️🪬
Thank you and welcome. Free subscribers can read a year of posts and paid subscribers can read the entire archive. All best, Laurie
I remember reading Kate MIllet's work many decades ago. Thanks for bringing her back to me!