 | | | | |
 | |  Do you own a bookstore, gift store, or other business? How about making a window or table display for Uppity Women Day? The wilder and wackier, the better. Use one or more of the women talked about in this list as your focus. For good display materials, contact the National Women's History Project: at 707/838-6000. They've got everything from posters to cool balloons.
| | | Feeling lavish? Go hot-air ballooning, in honor of the aerial derring-do of early balloonists Marie Thible, Marie-Madelaine Blanchard,and Americans Madame Delon, and Madame Johnson. While you're at it, toast your ascent pink champagne—from the cellars of Widow Nicole Clicquot, of course. |  | | | |
| Wear military drag for a day—see how it felt to be a rebel like Deborah Sampson, Mary Anne Talbot, or Maria Quiteira—just a few of the many women who opted to sail the seas or fight for their country. | | Another idea for the big-ticket historical hellion: take an around-the-world flight (or cruise) to emulate Jeanne Baret—history's first female to circumnavigate the globe in 1769. To be really authentic, however, you'll have to dress as a male servant, and spend two years on a sailing ship! (Hmm—sounds restful.) | | Want to be even more dashing? Climb into some buccaneer gear as a pirate along the lines of Mary Bonney, Anne Read, or Lady Ch'ing: floppy hat, a brace of flintlock pistols (they come in plastic), beachcomber pants, and a low neckline |
| Riding to the rescue: horse lovers, tell these stories to your riding club or around the barn: teen 'Paul Reveres' (only better) Deborah Champion and Sybil Ludington; and war heroine Mary Hooks Slocumb. For another look at "horsewomanship": you'll have them gasping at the survival story of valiant Sioux mother Marie Dorion, who with her children kept alive for 53 days snowbound--by recycling their dead horse. | |  | Teachers, librarians, children's booksellers, parents: tell or read children the real stories of Pocahontas, | | Sacagawea, and Betsy Ross (as told in the pages of Uppity Women of the New World). | | | Feeling really uppity? Tattoo your buttocks the traditional Tahitian way—with black stripes and patterns, in honor of Mauatea Christian and Jenny Adams (the gals who sailed with the mutineers of the Bounty, and settled Pitcairn Island). OR: get a free fake tattoo "uppity women rule" from Conari Press, and put it wherever you darn well dare. |
| Read Mother Goose rhymes to your kids or grandkids—then tell 'em about Elizabeth Goose, the granny who compiled the rhymes in early America. | | Virtually touch a piece of history: go to the Connecticut Historical Society's website and click through to see the red cloak worn by Deborah Champion on her heroic ride in September 1775. | | Like some of the uppity women exploring new worlds of earlier centuries, make a journey of exploration. Just for once, take a trip by yourself. Keep a journal during it. You'll discover things about other places—and yourself—you never knew. |
| | | | | |
