cream for your coffee
In a column, a male journalist criticized Alice Dunnigan and Ethel Payne by saying they were competing with each other to see who could ask the longest question of President Eisenhower.
I’m not sure whether he was truly implying that the two were at odds or just using a turn of phrase to make his point, but he was certainly trying to belittle the women he called “gal reporters.”
I’ve written a bit about Alice and Ethel in a newsletter before, but I now know so much more about Ethel Payne after two recent reads: Raising Her Voice: African-American Women Journalists Who Changed History by Rodger Streitmatter, which features a chapter on Alice and a chapter on Ethel, and Eye on the Struggle: Ethel Payne, the First Lady of the Black Press by James McGrath Morris.
Morris quotes Ethel in response to the “competing” column: “Alice Dunnigan and I put our heads together and decided to team up so that each week there would always be a question on some phase of civil rights,” she said.
Alice and Ethel were bonded through oppression, dedication, and the shared goal of advancing rights for Black people in the United States. This weekend, I spent time with two groups that are not nationally important like Alice and Ethel’s partnership was but are nevertheless meaningful to me.
Yesterday, in a delayed Galentine’s Day celebration, my friends Lexi, Shayla, Lucy and I did a Coffee Shop Crawl. We chose coffee shops and plotted a route: Luna’s Cafe in Nicholasville, The Amsden in Versailles, Sage Garden Cafe and Kentucky Coffeetree Cafe in Frankfort. We each brought along a book or two — the intent was to focus the day on reading, and we did a pretty good job, but of course we chatted, too. We also did some exploring, of Wilson Nurseries by Sage and Poor Richard’s Books by Coffeetree. It was a great day full of some of my most favorite things: books, coffee, and community with women.
Today I met virtually with my writing group, made up of fellow alumni from the Bluegrass Writers Studio. We discussed one of my Alice chapters as well as a chapter from Sherry’s in-progress novel (see Sherry’s work here). We also spent time talking about both writing and life — everything from making revisions to selling cars. As we wrapped up, we all expressed how grateful we were for the group and how it contributes to sustaining our writing lives. (In the continued spirit of Galentine’s Day: We have men in our group, too, but today it happened to be just women.)
What a joy it is to share life with good friends — and this weekend I’m especially grateful for women who love the same things I love. It reminds of how Zora Neale Hurston writes of friendship in her wonderful memoir Dust Tracks on a Road.
“Friendship is a mysterious and ocean-bottom thing,” she wrote. “Make the attempt if you want to, but you will find that trying to go through life without friendship is like milking a bear to get cream for your morning coffee. It is a whole lot of trouble, and then not worth much after you get it.”