HomeHomeAugust 2001
Greetings from the sweltering tundra! With one month left of our northern summer, we’re experiencing the true "dog days" of this season. With our leisure time, we’re enjoying outdoor activities such as the many annual summer festivals taking place. And we’re also sneaking away to the "cooler" places which provide brief respite from the merciless heat, such as movie theaters, coffee shops, restaurants, malls and bookstores.
For many American families, August will also provide the last opportunity of the summer to take a vacation and experience some "quality time" together before the new school year begins and various work/community/school activities will pull parents and children in different directions. However, for working Americans, taking a true break from the office is getting more and more difficult, thanks to the technology that makes it easier to stay in touch.
In our workaholic, "24/7" culture, the importance of taking time to break away from the pressures of modern life cannot be ignored. Even journalist Tom Brokaw has taken the summer off from his job at NBC! And currently, President Bush is taking the month of August off for a "working vacation."
Writer Joe Robinson of Escape magazine has covered the issue of "vacation starvation" for many years, and he advocates multiweek vacations for Americans. The topics of overwork and burnout must be addressed, and Robinson has formed a "Work To Live" committee at Escape.
Taking time off for travel or personal enrichment IS a new economy issue, and one that is becoming part of the national dialogue. It’s an especially important issue for women, traditionally the caretakers of home and family. And more and more women are taking off for the far corners of the earth. Travel provides opportunities for learning, growth, and leaves us with a greater sense of compassion for others, and gratitude for our lives, including the imperfect parts such as the hectic schedules.
Do you need some inspiration? Frommers.com offers a resource page for "feminist" (read: women only) travel opportunities. And, last March, MSNBC’s Travel Editor & producer, Robin Dalmas, wrote a two-part series about "women-only" vacations. Her series lists interesting opportunities, including spas, fishing vacations, dude ranches, and golf schools.
Women have been taking time off to explore the world and write about their adventures for decades. An excellent example is American adventurer and writer Emily Hahn. In his book, Nobody Said Not to Go: The Life, Loves, and Adventures of Emily Hahn (1998, Faber & Faber, New York), Ken Cuthbertson describes his subject: "Emily Hahn led an astounding life; she was a 1990s woman born a generation too soon. She came of age in the 1920s, at a time of great emotional and intellectual ferment." He adds that she "was far too free-spirited, far too intelligent to ever become a slave to social convention. She burned with a restless intensity that bedazzled most people."
Hahn traveled all over the world. In the 1920’s, she worked as a horseback trail guide in New Mexico. She also hiked across central Africa on her own in the 1930s, along with spending many years in Asia.
Also, there is Englishwoman Beryl Markham. She wrote West With The Night (1983, North Point Press, San Francisco), a classic book about her many years and many adventures in Africa in the early part of the 20th century. Ernest Hemingway once claimed she could "write rings around all of us who consider ourselves as writers."
We’ve previously mentioned Elizabeth Fagg Olds’ Women of the Four Winds: The Adventures of Four of America’s First Women Explorers (1985, Houghton Mifflin, Boston), and it’s a worthy read. The author shares something in common with the lives of the women she wrote about - Annie Smith Peck, Delia J. Akeley, Marguerite Harrison and Louise Arner Boyd - namely, they were all members of the Society of Woman Geographers.
Australian-based journalist Sue Williams, author of Getting There: Journeys of An Accidental Traveler (2001, New Holland Publishers, Sydney, Australia) has written amazing, inspirational, and even frightening tales of her travels around Africa, Latin America and India over the past twenty years. She summed up her thoughts on the risks and rewards of travel while visiting the Taj Mahal:
"On reflection, I’d had some hellish experiences over the years and at times, I thought I just wasn’t going to survive, but, because I was prepared to put myself in those situations, I’d seen things that defied explanation and met people of all races who had enriched my life in ways I’d never have imagined. Every life we pass through, I thought philosophically, we leave something of ourselves but take so much more with us."Whether we have one week, one month or a one-day vacation, we must take time off from our daily routines to keep the spirit of adventure alive in our own lives. Life in America rapidly is becoming more fast-paced and stressful, and taking time for ourselves may seem like an extremely selfish act---as though we are flaunting convention. However, maintaining balance in our busy lives also helps us maintain our physical/emotional/mental health. Your faithful WITNE columnist has taken the entire summer off from the day job, and can testify that the joys of having time to reconnect with family and friends, to dream and play, have been priceless!
We’ll see you back here in September.
Teresa
Other Interesting Tidbits...
August 26th is Women’s Equality Day which "commemorates the 1920 passage of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, granting (American) women the right to vote."
The August newstand issue of Victoria magazine celebrates "inspiring women" with a special issue focusing on 18 women entrepreneurs who turned their "passions into profits." Coincidentally, Janet Moore of the Minneapolis Star Tribune writes that despite the fact that women make up 80% of consumers, they hold fewer than 16 percent of executive positions.
The newest issue of Self magazine has an article by Michelle Gotthelf about web sites which give unhealthy diet advice to women and promote eating disorders. Yahoo recently removed the pro-anorexia and bulimia websites from it’s server.
Writer Catherine Siskos of Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine recently commented on the new trend we’re all seeing in American grocery stores---food designed, advertised and marketed especially for women and their "special nutritional needs". Ms. Siskos wonders if marketing special foods to men is next. At WITNE, we’re also watching trends which affect the lives of the 76-78 million U.S. Baby Boomers. Given that at least half of the boomers are women who are now entering the critical periods of perimenopause and menopause, we’ll see even more of these products in the years ahead.
Last month, Washington Post owner Katharine Graham passed away. We mentioned her Pulitizer Prize winning book, Personal History, in one our first WITNE columns, and it’s a terrific read worth mentioning again. Despite shyness and insecurity, Ms. Graham overcame many difficulties in her life to become one of the most influential women in the history of the United States. She was an American treasure.
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