Sonoma County-based National Women’s History Project marks its 35th anniversary

As a teacher, Molly Murphy MacGregor noticed that books detailing human achievement seemed to be all about men, men, men.

The former SRJC instructor and some students and colleagues agreed it would benefit girls and the entire culture to focus attention on the important contributions of women.

In 1980, MacGregor co-founded the National Women’s History project.

It was key to persuading Congress to proclaim each March as National Women’s History Week, and for people across the U.S. to emulate the efforts by MacGregor and the others to illuminate and celebrate the roles of women in history.

When they began 35 years, their supporters included Helen Rudee, then a Sonoma County supervisor, and future Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey, then on the county Commission of the Status of Women.

Rudee and Woolsey will speak at an anniversary luncheon of the National Women’s History Project on Aug. 29 at the Petaluma Woman’s Club. Check out nwhp.org.

Now and again throughout the decades, folks ask MacGregor why the national project was founded and remains based in Sonoma County.

“I say to them, have you ever been to Sonoma County?”

---------

LIFE AND DEATH were on their minds as Sebastopol’s Jeanette Lebell and her teen son, Quincy, journeyed the other day to Sacramento.

The occasion was the repackaging and re-activation of a stalled bill to allow terminally ill Californians to seek a prescription to end their lives on their timetable and terms.

The Sonoma County pair appealed to lawmakers for support because Jeanette’s husband and Quincy’s father, Jan Zlotnick, died in prolonged misery last New Year’s Eve.

“I tried to make it clear to them that Jan fought the good fight for over two decades and he deserved a better death,” Jeanette said. She pleaded throughout the Capitol that all terminally ill Californians “deserve that choice.”

---------

ART OF FLOATING: Look who’ll row the Russian River this weekend in a handmade little boat quite renowned in New York City.

Artist Marie Lorenz of Brooklyn and two fellow travelers will put in at the Warnecke Ranch in Alexander Valley and spend three days exploring, sketching, photographing, savoring and plucking artifacts of mankind from the river.

Lorenz will pilot the plywood skiff that for more than a decade has been central to “The Tide and Current Taxi,” the project that has her taking adventuresome passengers on tide-assisted voyages of discovery on the East River and other NYC waterways.

Lorenz’s paddle to Jenner segues to “Artists Are Like Water,” an exhibit by the New Yorker and a small boatload of other artists that opens Aug. 27 at The Look Up Gallery, inside the Guerneville Bank Club.

Chris Smith is at 521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @CJSPD.