Last week, CBS News profiled Ruth Lubic — Certified Nurse Midwife, MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant recipient, and founder of the DC Birth Center at the DC Developing Families Center.

Inspired to act by Washington, D.C.’s infant mortality rate — twice that of the nation as a whole — Lubic and her team work to reduce that rate by providing education and healthcare to women and their families. The birth center provides prenatal care, childbirth education, education on preventing premature delivery, nurse-midwife care (at the Center or in a hospital), postpartum care, and other health services for women and children.

According to the CBS piece, “After 800 babies in eight years, they have never lost a child in childbirth, and has cut the rate of premature births — the biggest risk factor for infant mortality — in half.”

Check out the video from CBS, and don’t miss 81-year-old Lubic’s response to the mention of retirement.

After a brief conversation with Lubic, it’s clear that she keeps quite busy advocating for infant mortality improvements.

Among her many activities, she appeared before Congressman Steve Cohen’s (D-TN) briefing on infant mortality last fall (Cohen represents Memphis, Tenn., which also has a shockingly high infant mortality rate), and will participate in another Congressional briefing this week. She will be part of a panel and blog launch event, “Disruptive Women in Health Care,” on the 25th of this month at the National Press Club.

To find out more about Lubic and the Center’s work, check out this video, as well as the articles listed below.

With the death of Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, the first black woman to represent Ohio in Congress, we’ve lost an incredible advocate for women’s reproductive rights and health care for all.

The memorial service may be held a week from Saturday, on Aug. 30, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

I was looking for a link that summed up the congresswoman’s passion and found this text and video of Jones reading the poem “And the Women Gathered” by Gloria Wade-Gayles (from Feb. 29, 2000). Here’s an excerpt:

And the world took notice
That women are warriors
(Always have been even in the beginning)
And so they gathered as women will
In the very eye of the storm
Pushing against its fury
With their own
And the world took notice
That women birth babies
And revolutions
The women gathered
Ten thousand Rosas inspired by one
You saw them.
You saw them.
You saw them.
You saw them.
The world saw them.

Below are some tributes — feel free to add your own thoughts or additional links in the comments.

- NPR: U.S. Reps. James Clyburn (D-SC) and Maxine Waters (D-CA) join Farai Chideya in offering remembrances.

- Pam Spaulding has reaction from officials.

- Columnist Connie Schultz writes, “Our friendship was forged by her to-the-bones understanding of what it means to be a woman willing to stick your neck out for your beliefs. I so appreciated never having to explain the punch line. She’d seen it all.”

When women’s health writer and activist Barbara Seaman died Feb. 27 of lung cancer, her death sent shockwaves through feminist and women’s health communities.

Also shocking was The New York Times story on Seaman’s death, which many OBOS readers said they found insulting and mean-spirited.

The first half or so provides a fair, if limited, overview of Seaman’s work and the impact she had on the women’s health movement, which included co-founding the National Women’s Health Network in 1975. But it s surprising that there are no comments from any of Seaman’s colleagues or those familiar with her work.

And once Seaman’s books and the surviving family members are listed, the story takes a turn for the worse. The only quote included is a book reviewer’s critique, in which Seaman is called “a conspiracy theorist by temperament and training.” Attention is then turned to this 20-year-old episode:

In the 1990s, Ms. Seaman also began to speak out publicly against domestic violence, from which she said she had suffered during her marriage to Mr. Forman. Though she did not identify Mr. Forman by name in the news media, court records show that in 1988 he was arrested and charged with assault after Ms. Seaman accused him of punching her in the face. The criminal case against Mr. Forman was later thrown out, Dudley Gaffin, his lawyer at the time, said in a telephone interview on Thursday.

Reached by telephone on Thursday, Mr. Forman denied having assaulted Ms. Seaman, calling the accusation of assault “a divorce tactic” on her part.

It’s amazing that the past is dredged up like this — and, after doing so, the last word is left to Seaman’s ex.

In a letter to The New York Times, Our Bodies Ourselves Executive Director Judy Norsigian wrote:

I was taken aback by the petty and gossipy nature of parts of the obituary for Barbara Seaman and hope that the Times will consider issuing an apology at least to her family. The comments of her ex-husband and his lawyer were particularly inappropriate (as one reporter noted to me, there are all sorts of reasons that a case is dropped – and they often have nothing to do with the culpability of the accused). Readers were left with a pretty clear sense that the NY Times thought that Barbara had made false accusations about Milt Forman’s behavior.

Mostly, I am getting emails about the poor taste exhibited on the part of the Times. Rather than include some of the more substantive criticisms and disagreements that she may have had with colleagues, the piece relied on a few rather general and unopposed character assaults.

As someone who has been close to other luminaries whose obituaries in the Times could easily have included far more damning commentary than was noted in this obituary (and with far better evidence for the character assault), I was left wondering if there was some mean-spirited motivation at play here. In any case, I was sorry to see what I consider a major journalistic lapse.

Naomi at A Little Red Hen offers a similar critique. Her post is also a personal remembrance of Seaman — both women were students at Oberlin in the 1950s and their paths had crossed several times since then.

After referencing “a respectful obit” in the Washington Post, Naomi writes:

How unregarded significant women like her continue to be is apparent in Saturday’s New York Times obituary. First, I’d have expected that it would have been written by someone who knew her work, not someone from the obit staff. Most of the week after Barbara’s death had been taken up in the Times with paens to the conservative writer, William Buckley who charmed many in the media. Barbara did not charm. Was this the reason the Times focused on details of her personal life rather than her continuing role as a muckraker, still writing about the dangers of estrogen all these years later.

For comparison, read the more thoughtful obit in the Washington Post — or this one from the L.A. Times. Both are representative of obituaries that a woman of Barbara Seaman’s insight and intellect deserves.

Plus: For an even more intimate view, read OBOS co-founder Norma Swenson’s passionate remembrance of Seaman that focuses on their involvement in the early women’s health movement.

We at OBOS are saddened to report that Barbara Seaman, co-founder of the National Women’s Health Network, noted feminist, women’s health activist, and author, died this morning. Seaman’s life and work leave much to be celebrated, as she was a tireless advocate for informed consent and exposing information on hormonal medications, including publication of the breakthrough 1969 book “The Doctors’ Case against the Pill,” which led to Congressional hearings on oral contraception and ultimately to the first safety warning on the drug.

Born in 1935 and an Oberlin College graduate and Sloan-Rockefeller Science Writing Fellowship winner at the Columbia University School of Journalism, Seaman authored and contributed to numerous additional works on women’s health topics during her career, including “The Greatest Experiment Ever Performed on Women: Exploding the Estrogen Myth,” “For Women Only!: Your Guide to Health Empowerment,” and “Women and the Crisis in Sex Hormones.” Seaman also edited a collection of essays by major figures from feminism and women’s health, “Body Politic: Dispatches from the Women’s Health Revolution.”

Gloria Steinem has high praise for Seaman, stating, “There is no single person on earth who has done more to advance women’s health, to make an intimate difference in millions of women’s lives, and to inform consumers so they can transform healthcare.”

OBOS’s own Judy Norsigian has also recognized Seaman’s impressive contributions: “Barbara has been a steady beacon and truth-teller in the women’s health movement for almost half a century. I consider myself so lucky to be among the hundreds of students and activists she has supported and guided over the years. She has helped Our Bodies Ourselves at so many critical junctures with both practical and philosophical issues, including her successful efforts to find a publisher — Seven Stories Press — for the 2000 edition of ‘Nuestros Cuerpos, Nuestras Vidas.’ ”

Profiles and Remembrances:

• National Women’s Health Network bio
• Barbara Seaman: A Remembrance by Jennifer Baumgardner
• Barbara Seaman, 72; author sparked modern women’s health movement - LA Times
• Barbara Seaman: Muckraker for Women’s Health - 10/03, Women’s eNews
• “Dear Injurious Physician” - In Memorium: Barbara Seaman, Sept. 11, 1935-Feb. 27, 2008
• Materials on and statement from Seaman for the “Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution” exhibit
• The Pill and I: 40 Years On, the Relationship Remains Wary - June 2000 piece by Seaman for the New York Times
• Wikipedia entry on Seaman

Update: Norma Swenson, one of the founders of Our Bodies Ourselves, has written a tribute to Barbara that we’ve posted at the OBOS website.

This news deviates a bit from our usual coverage here at Our Bodies Our Blog, but I wanted to note the death of celebrated writer Grace Paley, a feminist and political activist.

Paley, who described herself as a “combative pacifist,” died Wednesday at her home in Thetford Hill, Vt. She was 84. According to her husband, the playwright Robert Nichols, she had been battling breast cancer.

Here’s an excellent New York Times archive featuring reviews of Paley’s work and articles by and about her. Maud Newton has a reflection and more links here.

A new book of Paley’s poetry is scheduled to be published early next year by Farrar Straus & Giroux. It is tentatively titled “Fidelity: A Book of Poems.”

N.H. Becomes First State to Repeal Parental Notification Law: New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch signed legislation last week repealing a law requiring that a parent be notified before a minor has an abortion. “The 2003 law never took effect because of a court challenge, and the repeal took effect immediately,” reports the Washington Post. “I strongly believe parents should be involved in these decisions, providing important support and guidance. Unfortunately that is not possible in every case,” Lynch said.

HIV Testing and More: RH Reality Check has published a package of stories about HIV testing. Plus, The Choice of Sex Selection marks the first post in a series looking at sex selection in India.

Sing it Loud: More than 1,000 activists attended SisterSong’s national conference in Chicago last month on women of color, sexuality and safety. “At a time when HIV and other sexually transmitted infections disproportionately affect African American and Latina women, the gathering stressed the importance of talking openly about sex instead of allowing societal taboos to prevent conversations about risks and safety,” writes Jeff Fleischer at Women’s eNews.

“Everyone is telling us what not to do, but who’s telling us what to do?” says Loretta Ross, the national coordinator for Atlanta-based SisterSong, a collective of some 80 organizations focused on reproductive health for women of color. “‘Just say no’ ain’t worked for drugs, sex or politicians.”

My Mother’s Symptoms: The American Cancer Society and other groups recently identified a set of symptoms that might point to ovarian cancer. The symptoms were all too familiar to Agnes Krup, who writes at Women’s Voices for Change about losing her mother to ovarian cancer 20 years ago.

Sick Children, Working Moms: “Guilt-ridden mothers share stories of sending ailing kids to day care or school out of fear that staying home with them would result in discipline on the job,” writes Ellen Bravo at The Nation. “These stories don’t surprise me. But what was startling was hearing how many kids drag themselves to school sick to keep a parent from losing pay or getting fired.”

How to Pee Standing Up: Rachel at Women’s Health News does it so we don’t have to. Here’s her review of the P-Mate, a portable urinating device.

OUCH: Tara C. Smith of Aetiology reports on an article in the August issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases about what can happen when a bikini wax goes bad — and, as Smith notes, “it’s every bit as bad as you think.” it’s quite a revealing piece (no pun intended). “The paper,” writes Smith, “is as much about the psychology of beauty and the lengths one will put themself through as it is a report of the infection.”

Walk With Your Work: I’m pretty much tethered to my computer desk/laptop, so this walk-and-work set-up, as reported in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, sounds kind of cool. Or it’s a reminder I should really get outside more. (Via Spine-Health)

And Another Thing: That would be the name of Katha Pollitt’s new blog at The Nation. Good times ahead …

Women’s eNews held its sixth annual 21 Leaders for the 21st Century gala earlier this week.

Check out the amazing honorees — “Seven Who Will Not Be Stopped,” “Seven Who Exert the Power of Their Voice,” and “Seven Who Stake Our Claim to the Future” — and read editor Rita Henley Jensen’s preview of the event.

Video interviews with each of the 21 Leaders will be posted on the Women’s eNews website next month.

What Do You Get for the Mother Who Doesn’t Have Everything?: An increase in the minimum wage, for starters, writes Lauren Seemeyer at Womenstake.org, a new blog by the National Women’s Law Center.

Global Commitment to Safe Motherhood: “Mother’s Day is bittersweet for those of us who work in the field of maternal health,” writes Jill Sheffield, founder and president of Family Care International, at RH Reality Check.

Everything Conceivable: The Washington Post’s Liza Mundy had an incredible story published in last week’s magazine section about the relationship forged by two families after an open adoption. Mundy and Ann Goldfarb, the adoptive mother, and Hava Leichtman, the birth mother, participated in an online discussion on Monday with readers.

Mundy is also the author of a new book, “Everything Conceivable: How Assisted Reproduction Is Changing Men, Women, and the World,” which is reviewed here by Debora L. Spar, a professor at Harvard Business School and author of “The Baby Business: How Money, Science, and Politics Drive the Commerce of Conception.” Plus: Here’s an interview Mundy did with Salon.

A Third Gender in the Workplace: That’s how mothers are treated, writes Ellen Goodman. “On Mother’s Day 2007 there is still a deep-seated bias that puts the image of a ‘good mother’ at odds with that of an ‘ideal worker.’”

How to Handle “The Return”: For the past five years, Amy Joyce has written the “Life at Work” column in the Business section of The Washington Post and she also hosts a weekly online chat about people’s lives on the job. So she knows a thing or two about the pressures involved in deciding when and how to return to work after giving birth. But now that she’s about to have her first child, it’s all personal. A terrific column by a great columnist (whose work will surely be missed).

Happy (Feminist) Mother’s Day!: “In the seemingly never-ending debate about women’s place in society, I am grateful to these male role models who value ‘women’s work’ so much, they freely chose it for themselves,” writes Ruth Conniff at The Progressive.

The Mother’s Day Gift I Want: “For more than half a century, the media have used Jewish mothers as convenient targets for a humor that, while sometimes affectionate, easily veers into misogyny and anti-Semitism. Scapegoating the Jewish mother as a colossal maternal tyrant represents a failure to understand the complexities of motherhood that ultimately harms all women,” writes Joyce Antler, author of “You Never Call! You Never Write!: A History of the Jewish Mother” and founder and former director of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at Brandeis University.

Web Offers Mother Lode of Data: Websites offer advice on everything from shopping for strollers to political activism on behalf of family-friendly policies. Just as important is the chance for parent-parent contact, notes Eleanor J. Bader in this Women’s eNews essay.

Childless — And OK With That: Also at RH Reality Check, Lauren Drummond celebrates “all the choices about our bodies and motherhood that we have in this country.”

Plus: A new University of Florida study looks at how important motherhood is for women’s happiness in midlife. The study of nearly 6,000 women between the ages of 51 and 61 will appear in the June 7 issue of the International Journal of Aging and Human Development.

“Contrary to warnings we hear about being lonely if you don’t have children, our study finds that childless women and mothers generally report similar levels of psychological well-being in their 50s,” said Tanya Koropeckyj-Cox, lead author and a UF sociology professor. “Whether you are socially integrated or have concerns about paying the bills – those things play a more direct role in shaping psychological well-being among women in midlife.”

Mother’s Day is May 13, and we’re already hearing about publications and events worth noting. But first, a quiz:

When did Mother’s Day begin?
1. In 1858, when Anna Jarvis, a young Appalachian homemaker, organized “Mother’s Work Days” to improve the sanitation and avert deaths from disease-bearing insects and seepage of polluted water.
2. In 1872, when Boston poet, pacifist and women’s suffragist Julia Ward Howe established a special day for mothers — and for peace — not long after the bloody Franco-Prussian War.
3. In 1905, when Anna Jarvis died. Her daughter, also named Anna, decided to memorialize her mother’s lifelong activism, and began a campaign that culminated in 1914 when Congress passed a Mother’s Day resolution.

Head over to the National Women’s History Project for the answer …

Fem-MOM-ism: RH Reality Check is running a Fem-MOM-ism series that celebrates motherhood from political, personal and global perspectives. New articles include “Feminist Reflections on Motherhood,” by Amy Richards; “Global Commitment to Safe Motherhood,” by Jill Sheffield, founder and president of Family Care International; and an interview with China Martens on punk parenthood.

For What It’s Worth: If stay-at-home mothers were paid, their salary would be $138,095, according to the latest research by Salary.com (reported by Reuters). Mothers with full-time jobs outside the home would pick up an additional $85,939.

“Women, Work and Family Across the Life Cycle”: Eastern Massachusetts OWL is hosting a Mother’s Day Celebration Tuesday, May 8, on the UMass campus in Boston. Guest speaker is Suzanne Bump, Massachusetts secretary of labor and workforce development, who will address work-related issues of midlife and older women in Massachusetts and the new administration’s agenda for women.

Our Bodies Ourselves is one of the sponsoring organizations. The event begins at 1:30 p.m. at the Healy Library (11th floor). For more information, call 617-287-7305.

Sometimes we appreciate a work of historical scholarship because of the new perspective it offers on the past, sometimes because of the added depth it provides to figures and events with which we are already familiar, and sometimes because it gives context to the struggles of the present.

A recent release from the University of Illinois Press promises to do all of the above.

“Feminists Who Changed America: 1963-1975,” edited by Barbara Love, acts as a “Who’s Who” of second-wave feminism, chronicling the achievements of over 2000 feminist pioneers, including many of the original founders of the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective: Joan Ditzion, Jane Pincus, Judy Norsigian, Paula Doress-Worters, Nancy Hawley, Wendy Sanford and Norma Swenson, as well as many of our contributors and supporters.

For more historical perspective, make your way over to “Our History” — a brief but fascinating look at both the development of OBOS and the modern women’s health movement. Originally published in the Journal of the American Women’s Medical Association, it provides not only a sense of where we came from but also an inspiring call to action.

Founders of the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, circa 1975

This being women’s history month, I’d like to write about women whose names are not well known, but who have left their mark in ways both big and small. I came across the obituary of a Boston-area social worker, Rose Bernstein, whose early advocacy on behalf of single mothers — and her empahsis on the importance of the role of the unmarried father — made her a trailblazer in her field. Bernstein died last month, on Cape Cod, at the age of 98. From the Boston Globe:

Long before unmarried women with babies were described as single moms, clinical social worker Rose Bernstein was on a mission to erase the words “born out of wedlock” from popular use.

“Rose helped to shift the stigma of the ‘out of wedlock’ mother to the concept of helping unmarried mothers and fathers,” said her colleague Catherine Sherry-Paré of Dennis. [...]

In the introduction to her 1971 book, “Helping Unmarried Mothers,” Mrs. Bernstein points a finger at social agencies for inflicting lasting emotional damage on single mothers.

“Society sees to it that by action or by implication, a woman who is having a child out of wedlock will come away from the experience with an inferior sense of herself as a mother, whether she keeps her baby or relinquishes him for adoption.”

A New York City native and Cornell grad, Bernstein earned a master’s in education from City College of New York and a master’s in social work at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. She was the social worker for the first Boston Big Sisters organization, and in the 1940s and 1950s she worked at Crittenden Hastings House, a home for unwed mothers, now Crittenden Women’s Union, and for United Community Services.

Bernstein lived in the Boston area until 1971, when her husband retired as professor at the Boston University School of Social Work and the couple moved to Dennis, according to the Globe. There, she continued to work in private practice and as a mentor to social workers. The Boston Herald notes that Bernstein “participated in a number of peace and civil rights demonstrations. She and her husband also co-founded Cape Cod Family and Children Services,” now Cape Cod Human Services.

“Rose could relate to anyone of any age with brilliant intuitiveness, warmth, and generosity of spirit, renewing others by her very presence,” said Sherry-Paré. “She conveyed a great sense of warmth and flair and looked like everyone’s Jewish grandmother.”

Bernstein also volunteered in schools in Dennis and Yarmouth. About a dozen years ago, school officials overreacted to her allowing kindergarteners to climb in her lap, and asked her to stop, fearing it could be interpreted as inappropriate. Bernstein at this time must have been around 85 — woudn’t the main danger be kids climbing on her? — but in any case, her colleagues advised her not to turn away the children. That year, according to the Globe, Benstein was the school district’s volunteer of the year.

Ending a 123-year tradition, the All England Club, organizers of the Wimbledon tennis championships, announced that from now on women will be awarded the same prize money as men — prompting Tom Zeller to note, “And Only 34 Years After Billie Jean King Beat Bobby Riggs!” A robust debate on equal pay follows in the comments section.

Plus: Over at Women’s Voices for Change, Frances Fergusson, a member of the presidential search committee that selected Drew Gilpin Faust as Harvard’s new president, talks about what Faust’s appointment means for women and the pervasive glass ceiling in the corporate world.

Fergusson recently stepped down as Vassar’s president, after having led the Poughkeepsie, N.Y. college for 20 years.

The New York Times today has a profile of Drew Gilpin Faust, who on Sunday was selected as Harvard’s new president — the first woman to lead the school in its 371-year history. Sara Rimer writes:

“One of the things that I think characterizes my generation — that characterizes me, anyway, and others of my generation — is that I’ve always been surprised by how my life turned out,” Dr. Faust said in an interview Sunday at Loeb House just after the university announced that she would become its 28th president, effective July 1. “I’ve always done more than I ever thought I would. Becoming a professor — I never would have imagined that. Writing books — I never would have imagined that. Getting a Ph.D. — I’m not sure I would even have imagined that. I’ve lived my life a step at a time. Things sort of happened.”

Sunday morning, she said, she found herself lying in bed thinking in near disbelief, “Today I think they’re going to vote for you for the president of Harvard.”

Looking at coverage in other papers, the Christian Science Monitor discusses gender imbalance across academia. Ben Arnoldy writes:

A current Harvard dean, she will not only sit at the pinnacle of higher education, but will oversee a budget on a par with top corporations. Of the 20 female CEOs in the Fortune 1000, only one runs a firm with assets greater than Harvard’s.

Despite the 50-50 leadership split at the Ivies, only 20 percent of US colleges and universities are run by women. Dr. Faust’s appointment could have a lasting impact on the gender imbalance among faculty at Harvard, and in the leadership ranks across academia, experts say.

“This is a crack in the glass ceiling, in the sense that to have as prestigious an institution as Harvard expand their notion of suitability for the presidency, sets an example for the rest of academia that’s hard to ignore,” says Margaret Miller, professor of higher education at the University of Virginia.

AP writer Jesse Harlan Alderman writes (via the Boston Globe) that in Faust, “Harvard not only has its first woman leader, but a president who has candidly discussed her feminist ideals in a memoir, ‘Shapers of Southern History: Autobiographical Reflections.’”

Born Catherine Gilpin in the Jim Crow era, to a privileged family in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, Faust writes that a conversation at age 9 with the family’s black handyman and driver inspired her to send a letter to President Eisenhower pleading for desegregation.

She then began to question the rigid Southern conventions where girls wore “scratchy organdy dresses” and white children addressed black adults by their first names.

“I was the rebel who did not just march for civil rights and against the Vietnam War but who fought endlessly with my mother, refusing to accept her insistence that ‘this is a man’s world, sweetie, and the sooner you learn that, the better off you’ll be,’” she writes.

The Globe also ran a story on the highlights of Faust’s career that discusses more of her writings and research.

I was so saddened to see that Molly Ivins has died. I knew this week she was very ill from the breast cancer she has fought for years, but she was such a huge and important force that her death still comes as a surprise.

Just today I came across this post at The Latest Obsession that served as a reminder of how Ivins always cut through the crap and left readers feeling smarter and more politically engaged (and often enraged) than they might have been five minutes earlier.

As any reader of Ivins knows, she was very much against the U.S. war in Iraq. Her final column, “Stand Up Against the Surge,” is available here. “We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders,” wrote Ivins. “And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous.”

Her longtime editor and friend, Anthony Zurcher, has already posted a very moving tribute that reads in part:

Shortly after becoming editor of Molly Ivins’ syndicated column, I learned one of my most important jobs was to tell her newspaper clients that, yes, Molly meant to write it that way. We called her linguistic peculiarities “Molly-isms.” Administration officials were “Bushies,” government was in fact spelled “guvment,” business was “bidness.” And if someone was “madder than a peach orchard boar,” well, he was quite mad indeed.

Of course, having grown up in Texas, all of this made sense to me. But to newspaper editors in Seattle, Chicago, Detroit and beyond — Yankee land, as Molly would say — her folksy language could be a mystery. “That’s just Molly being Molly,” I would explain and leave it at that.

But there was more to Molly Ivins than insightful political commentary packaged in an aw-shucks Southern charm. In the coming days, much will be made of Molly’s contributions to the liberal cause, how important she was as an authentic female voice on opinion pages across the country, her passionate and eloquent defense of the poorest and the weakest among us against the corruption of the most powerful, and the joy she took in celebrating the uniqueness of American culture — and all of this is true. But more than that, Molly Ivins was a woman who loved and cared deeply for the world around her. And her warm and generous spirit was apparent in all her words and deeds.

The Berkeley Daily Planet, a newspaper in Berkeley, Calif., yesterday announced the launch of the “Molly Ivins Festschrift.”

A festschrift is defined by Merriam-Webster as “a volume of writings by different authors presented as a tribute or memorial especially to a scholar.” Academics are wont to create festschrifts on the occasion of a revered colleague’s 60th birthday, for example. Molly’s already 62, but no time like the present to catch up with what we should have done two years ago. And we might call it festschrift if we could reliably remember how to spell or pronounce that German word, but let’s just call it the Molly Ivins Tribute Project.

The idea is that her colleagues in the opinionated part of the journalistic world should take over her campaign while she’s sick, creating a deluge of columns about what’s wrong with Bush’s war and what should be done to set things right. It would be nice if a lot of these columns could be funny, since skewering serious subjects with humor is what Molly does best, but that’s not required.

Here at the Berkeley Daily Planet we’ve set up a special mailbox to receive the offerings, tribute@berkeleydailyplanet.com. We’ll publish them as they come in, at least one every day if possible, in our Internet edition, berkeleydailyplanet.com. We’d like them to be contributed free of copyright, so that any publication, print or online, can take them off the web and re-circulate them to their own readers. The best ones we’ll also run in our Tuesday and Friday printed papers. A good length would be 600-800 words, which would work for most publications. And of course, columnists under contract should just write pieces to run in their regular outlets.

Readers, please take on the job of forwarding this call for contributions to any good columnist you read regularly, and to any publications which might circulate the results.

Let’s hope it continues; it’s a terrific way to celebrate the legacy of a woman who will always be remembered for her salty words and the power of her pen.

When I married, we used books by our favorite authors instead of numbers to identify the guest tables. Those sitting at the table with Ivins’ “Nothin’ But Good Times Ahead” were delighted with their luck. I will miss her dearly.

“She was not your average, beautiful heroine,” says Bea Arthur, the actress who played the title character in “Maude,” the ground-breaking television sitcom. “But I felt like Cinderella … It was one of the first times on television that a woman was seen as the head of the family instead of the usual fumbling male.”

Maude Findlay first appeared as a character on Norman Lear’s “All in the Family” as Archie Bunker’s sister-in-law and true foil — a liberal, outspoken woman. In the spin-off series that ran on CBS from 1972 to 1978, Lear centered the story around her, not shying away from her feminism.

Writing for the Museum of Broadcast Communications, Kathyrn Fry explains, “Strong-willed, intelligent and articulate, the liberal progressive Maude spoke out on issues raised less openly on Lear’s highly successful All in the Family. While questions of race, class and gender politics reverberated throughout both, certain specific issues, like menopause, birth control and abortion were more openly confronted on Maude.”

In fact, in November of the show’s second season, Maude finds out she is pregnant at age 47 and decides to have an abortion. This is in New York state, where abortion had already been legalized. To understand the significance of that moment to this day, check out this terrific “Timeline of Abortion Stories in U.S. Popular Media,” or read what I wrote about taboo TV topics back at Ms.

So, I’m thinking you should get to know Maude, if you don’t already. And it’s soon going to be very easy. The first season DVD will be released March 20.

“Nearly 35 years after its debut in fall 1972, viewers may find Maude: The Complete First Season (Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, $29.95) tame,” writes Gary Strauss in USA Today, adding that Maude’s story lines were incredibly controversial at the time.

Which pleased Bea Arthur, who went on to be one of “The Golden Girls.”

“I liked the fact that we touched on just about everything untouchable,” said Arthur. “It was so very different and not what people expected.”