In response to Ann’s tag, here are eight random facts about me. I am still trying to think of who I want to tag. (I was never good at that game.)
1. My first career ambition was to be a jockey, but back then there were not many, if any, female jockeys and I thought I had to refer to female jockeys as”jockettes.”
2. The professor I had for my American History class in college taught me that the proper term to refer to proponents of the right of women to vote is”Suffragists”not”Suffragettes”and that the latter term was used derisively by opponents of the right of women to vote. From this I learned not to use the term”jockettes”or any other word ending in”ette.”
3. I didn’t start my college education at U.C. Berkeley, where I received my B.A. in political science, because I made a decision in high school to learn to play the clarinet instead of taking a required course in Spanish. This led me to meet the aforementioned professor at a local state college and to learn about and be inspired by women throughout history.
4. In the first history class I took at U.C. Berkeley, a class on the Reconstruction era taught by a”preeminent”historian, no mention was ever made of women.
5. Years after reading Twenty Years at Hull House (about Italian immigrant families in Chicago) and the Grapes of Wrath (about farmers hurt by the Dust Bowl), I realized that each book told the story of one side of my family.
6. I am a first generation college graduate and lawyer who worked my way through college and law school, but my accomplishments pale in comparison to what my great-grandparents, grandparents and parents endured.
7. The most important thing I ever learned was my grandmother’s recipe for spaghetti sauce.
8. Regrettably, I don’t know how to play the clarinet or speak Spanish.
–Sharon Sandeen
