Brain & Guts

Lino portraits of historical women with a legacy of smarts and audacity.

21/09/2021

From the start of this year I’ve been entertaining myself on a daily basis by reading the delightful book ‘Toksvig’s Almanac, An eclectic meander through the historical year, 2021’, written by the wise and wonderful Sandi Toksvig. During the pandemic she plundered her own library for wonderful stories about all kinds of women from history – every day she highlights a different woman with a noteworthy accomplishment or interesting story. What a wonderful source of inspiration.

If you’d rather listen to Sandi instead, no worries, she also had a podcast along the same lines called ‘We will get passed this‘.

"Time and again the history we learn is dependent entirely on who wrote it down" - page 188 of Toksvig Almanac

26/02/2021

Grace Hopper's logbook with the moth she picked out of the Harvard Mark I, leading to her coining the term 'bug' for a computer malfunction. The bug is kept at the National Museum of American History.

24/02/2021

Grace Hopper was one of the first modern computer programmers, a central figure in the development of computers and a key player in evolving programming language. It was also Grace who first ‘debugged’ a computer, coining the term ‘bug’ for a computing malfunction, when she picked an actual bug out of the hardware of a machine.

Grace invented the first computer compiler, a program that translates written instructions into codes that computers read directly. Her compiler automatically created code by using a catalogue of sub-routines (pseudo-code), saving operators programming time. The benefit was that other manufacturers could use it too, creating a standard.

Her work on the compiler led her to co-develop the COBOL, one of the earliest standardized computer languages. COBOL enabled computers to respond to words in addition to numbers. This easy-to-use language is probably the most successful programming language for business applications in history. It helped launch the exponential growth of inventions in computer sciences, leading up to the information revolution.

Read more on https://brainandguts.nl/2021/02/23/grace-hopper/

21/02/2021

In the seventies, the artist Judy Chicago created the work 'The Dinner Party'. She created an elaborate table setting for historical women, each guest getting their story told through the table arrangement. The Dutch artist Patricia Kaersenhout updated this artwork to make it more inclusive with her work Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner Too.

Source: Apple Art Centre, Amsterdam

19/02/2021

It's worth checking out the UN women website. On https://interactive.unwomen.org/ there's a flashy timeline and some nice stories connected to larger issues the organisation is tackling.

17/02/2021

Yesterday the W.T.O. officially appointed Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala as its new Director-General. She'll be the first woman and the first African to serve the post.
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15/02/2021

Want to know more about the role of women in the climate justice movement? A 5-minute biography of interesting women from history? Or just a meander through fairly random history with examples of all types of women? Maybe listen to the following podcasts:

- Mothers of Invention
- Encyclopedia Womannica
- We Will Get Past This

Any other tips? I'd love to hear!

Photo source:

13/02/2021

Maria Sibylla Merian was a naturalist who studied painted botanicals and insects. She was the first to fully record the metamorphosis of butterflies and portray animals in their natural context. Her work also showed insects with the fauna they relied upon. Born in Germany, she ended up living in Amsterdam. From here, in her fifties, she travelled to Suriname to portray the flora and fauna of the tropics.

David Attenborough is a fan of her work: "you can certainly tell a Merian drawing. She had a deep affection for curls. I mean she can't resist a curl.”

Read more of her story here: https://brainandguts.nl/2019/11/12/maria-sibylla-merian/

12/02/2021

Wangari Maathai was a Kenyan environmentalist who started the Green Belt Movement, responsible for planting over 30 million trees, and she was the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Born in 1940 near a holy fig tree in the Kenyan central highlands, she got lucky with her education when her mother boldly decided to send her to school. First Italian nuns schooled her, later she studied in the US during the Civil Rights Movement.

With a doctorate in the pocket and a strong vision, Wangari fought for environmental and social justice, seeing the two as connected. Controversial for some, she was strong, stubborn and “hard to control”. She also brought women into the political centre, using gender and nudity in protests. Her husband divorced her, she was imprisoned and beaten, but ‘Mama Miti’, mother of trees, inspired many.

Read her story here: https://brainandguts.nl/2020/04/24/wangari-maathai/

11/02/2021

Need a tip of what to watch next? Check out ‘Self Made’ on Netflix. It’s about the first female self-made millionaire, Madame CJ Walker (born Sarah Breedlove). She made her fortune selling hair care and cosmetics product for African American women, a market which white men hadn’t quite yet broken into. She was also a patron of the arts, an activist and there's this brilliant picture of her in this electric car she owned - in the 1900s!

Photo source: Madam Walker Family Archives.

10/02/2021

We have more chants by Hildegard Von Bingen than by any other composer from the entire middle ages. She’s one of few to write both the music and the words. Hildegard is also the first Christian thinker to positively describe women, discussing menstruation, s*x, birth and menopause.

Born in 1098 near Mainz, Hildegard became a respected visionary and leader within the church. Her work included being a Benedictine abbess, teacher, composer, writer, healer, philosopher, mystic, founder of monasteries and natural scientist. She wrote about the cosmos, theology and the medicinal properties of plants. Many of her works survive, so we know she corresponded with popes and kings to provide them with counsel, comfort and criticism.

In her work, Hildegard viewed people at the centre of the universe, with our body and soul as a miniature representation of the greater world. We hold the power of life within us. Some consider her the founder of scientific natural history in
Germany.

Read more about her story here: https://brainandguts.nl/2019/11/26/hildegarde-von-bingen/

09/02/2021

Ching Shih is widely considered the most successful pirate in history. She commanded the largest crew ever assembled, negotiated herself out of her crimes and died in 1844 in her own bed as a free woman.

After taking over from her pirate husband, she terrorised the China Seas with her fleet of 300 junks (traditional Chinese sailing ships) manned by 20,000 to 40,000 pirates. She had very strict and harsh rules, which included the protection of female prisoners. If a man r***d a woman on board, he would be put to death. If the s*x was mutual, they would both have to die. Her rule was harsh, make no mistake.

No navy could capture or defeat her fleet. They raided coastal towns and other ships, enriching themselves and infuriating the authorities. Only when Ching Shih was offered deal by the Chinese government did she step back on land. She negotiated the freedom of herself and 98% of her crew, some of her top guys even ended up working for the government. She died in Portuguese enclave Macao, as a salt trader and owner of a gambling house and brothel. The most successful pirate in history died a free woman.

Read more of her story here: https://brainandguts.nl/2019/11/19/pirate-ching-shih/

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Amsterdam

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