#it was a fantastic time. ‘mellon’ was possibly in the title

[azaisya]

@just-another-linguist and @melestasflight both requested Fingon which was v exciting. Fingon is one of the characters that really stuck with me the first time I read the Silm, but I’ve never actually drawn him. In my mind this is like a Valinor-era Fingon!

[best-life-hacks-on]

20 Life-Changing Books!

By Seth Adam Smith

If you want to change your body, change what you eat and how you exercise. If you want to change your outlook on life, change what you read and put it into practice.

Listed below are twenty life-changing books. Unless you are determined to be miserable (which, strangely enough, some people are), these books will change your life for the better. Click on the titles to order a copy for yourself, then mark them up and put them into practice.

1. Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl - In this book, the author details his experiences in an Auschwitz concentration camp, while simultaneously sharing his perspective on living a meaningful life. The book has sold well over 10 million copies and has been consistently listed as one of the most influential books ever written. From the book: “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”

2. As A Man Thinketh by James Allen - Although you could probably finish this little booklet in less than an hour or two, its words are powerful and profound. Words like these: “A man’s mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild; but whether cultivated or neglected, it must, and will, bring forth. If no useful seeds are put into it, then an abundance of useless weed seeds will fall therein, and will continue to produce their kind.”

3. The Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown - In this book, the author addresses how to find deep personal worth while living in a world that is constantly bombarded by messages of who, what, and how we should be. From the book: “Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy—the experiences that make us the most vulnerable. Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.”

4. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho - This is a fantastic, beautiful narrative about finding out who we are and fearlessly chasing our own “personal legend.” In this book, Coelho says: “There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.”

5. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo - Does this book really need any explaining? It follows the life of reformed convict, Jean Valjean, and illustrates the power and beauty of redemption. From the book: “To love another person is to see the face of God.”

6. The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch - Diagnosed with terminal, pancreatic cancer, professor Randy Pausch delivered his “last lecture” at Carnegie Mellon in September of 2007. His lecture was structured around the hypothetical question: “What wisdom would you try to impart to the world if you knew it was your last chance?” The book fleshes out the ideas presented in the last lecture and was co-authored and approved by Pausch before he died. From the book: “The key question to keep asking is, Are you spending your time on the right things? Because time is all you have.”

7. To Kill a Mockingbird - To put it simply, Atticus Finch is one of the best, noblest characters ever written into existence. From the book: “I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.”

8. The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck - Where do I start? This book is honestly one of my absolute favorite books of all time. It is packed with incredible insight and solutions for confronting and solving some of life’s greatest problems. For example, consider this: “Problems call forth our courage and our wisdom; indeed, they create our courage and wisdom.”

9. Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff by Richard Carlson - This book helps you overcome “the small stuff” that can drive you crazy. It is filled with supportive and thoughtful suggestions on how to live a more peaceful life. From the book: “...when you let go of your expectations, when you accept life as it is, you’re free.To hold on is to be serious and uptight. To let go is to lighten up.”

10. The Seven Paths by the Anasazi Foundation - This poetic, evocative story presents the meditations of an ancient Anasazi tribesman who learns that the point of life’s walk is how one is moved in the heart. He walks seven paths, each teaching a lesson symbolized by an element of the natural world: light, wind, water, stone, plants, animals, and, finally, the unity of all beings with the Creator.

11. The Secret by Rhonda Byrne - In this bestselling book, various individuals share their insight and experience with “The Secret” (the law of attraction). While this book can get a little mystical, it does a really good job at explaining how our mental outlook can affect all areas of our lives (for you business types, I would also recommend Think And Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill).

12. 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Steven Covey - This book is consistently listed as one of the most inspiring books ever written and has sold more than 15 million copies worldwide. From the book: “But until a person can say deeply and honestly, “I am what I am today because of the choices I made yesterday,” that person cannot say, “I choose otherwise.”

13. The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis - If you’d like to read some more inspirational fiction, check out these classics by C. S. Lewis. Not only are they entertaining, but they’re also filled with timeless wisdom about addiction, sin, guilt, and the nature of man. Plus, the seventh book is quite possibly one of the most beautiful fiction books I’ve ever read. From the book: “Now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”

14. How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie - I’m a fairly introverted person, so I’m not exactly going out of my way to meet new people. But this book provides some great, practical advice on working with and helping people. I’m a big believer in finding happiness. From the book: “You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.”

15. The Greatest Salesman in the World by Og Mandino - This book probably isn’t what you think it is, but I won’t spoil the surprise. From the book: “Wealth, my son, should never be your goal in life. Your words are eloquent but they are mere words. True wealth is of the heart, not of the purse.”

16. The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis - In this allegorical story, a busload of sinners leave the depths of hell to see what heaven might be like. When they get there, they are told that they can stay in heaven if they can give up the sins that are holding them back. Through an array of characters struggling with different vices, C. S. Lewis masterfully illustrates that, more often than not, we are the very things that are holding ourselves back.

17. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak - I don’t even know how to describe this book. It’s beautiful, heart-breaking, yet very comforting—all at the same time. It tells the story of a little girl growing up in Germany during World War II. There is one scene in the book (which was left out of the movie) that is absolutely astounding—reading that one scene is worth every minute spent reading the whole book.

18. The Shack by William P. Young - After his youngest daughter is murdered by a serial killer, Mackenzie Allen Phillips receives a mysterious note—apparently from God—telling him to return to “the shack,” the scene of the crime. What happens next is a spiritual journey of love and forgiveness that forever changes his life. From the book: “[...] love is much stronger than your fault could ever be.”

19. The Book of Virtues by William J. Bennett - This book is a massive collection of some of the greatest stories ever told. I actually have a copy of it on the corner of my desk right now—one of the stories in that book changed my life.

20. Sacred Writings - I don’t know if you’re a religious person or not, so this one is entirely up to you. But I believe that many religions contain incredible, invaluable, time-tested truths—and we would be foolish to simply ignore them. At the very least, there’s something to be said of getting in touch with your religious/cultural roots.

If you like any of these books, please be sure to check out my own book “Your Life Isn’t For You.” In it, I draw upon inspirational stories from history and literature to illustrate my deep conviction that the only way you can truly find and live your life is to give it away to others.

Follow Seth Adam Smith on Twitter:

www.twitter.com/SethAdamSmith

[sciencespies]

The Powerful, Complicated Legacy of Betty Friedan's 'The Feminine Mystique'

https://sciencespies.com/history/the-powerful-complicated-legacy-of-betty-friedans-the-feminine-mystique/

The Powerful, Complicated Legacy of Betty Friedan's 'The Feminine Mystique'

Is it possible to address a “problem that has no name?” For Betty Friedan and the millions of American women who identified with her writing, addressing that problem would prove not only possible, but imperative.

In the acclaimed 1963 The Feminine Mystique, Friedan tapped into the dissatisfaction of American women. The landmark bestseller, translated into at least a dozen languages with more than three million copies sold in the author’s lifetime, rebukes the pervasive post-World War II belief that stipulated women would find the greatest fulfillment in the routine of domestic life, performing chores and taking care of children.

Her indelible first sentences would resonate with generations of women. “The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the twentieth century in the United States.” Friedan’s powerful treatise appealed to women who were unhappy with their so-called idyllic life, addressing their discontent with the ingrained sexism in society that limited their opportunities.

Now a classic, Friedan’s book is often credited with kicking off the “second wave” of feminism, which raised critical interest in issues such as workplace equality, birth control and abortion, and women’s education.

The late Friedan, who died in 2006, would have celebrated her 100th birthday this month. At the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, a tattered, well-read copy of The Feminine Mystique, gifted by former museum curator Patricia J. Mansfield, is secured in the nation’s collections of iconic artifacts. It was included in the museum’s exhibition titled “The Early Sixties: American Culture,” which was co-curated by Mansfield and graphic arts collection curator Joan Boudreau and ran from April 25, 2014 to September 7, 2015.

At the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery the 1995 Betty Friedan by Alice Matzkin depicts the reformer in a contemplative pose.

(NPG, © 1995 Alice Matzkin)

“One of the things that makes The Feminine Mystique resonant is that it’s a very personal story,” says the museum’s Lisa Kathleen Graddy, a curator in the division of political and military history. “It’s not a dry work. It’s not a scholarly work. . . it’s a very personal series of observations and feelings.”

While The Feminine Mystique spoke bold truth to white, college-educated, middle-class women, keeping house and raising children and dealing with a lack of fulfillment, it didn’t recognize the circumstances of other women. Black and LGBTQ feminists in the movement were largely absent from the pages of The Feminine Mystique and in her later work as a leading activist, prominent members of the feminist movement would come to clash with her beliefs and her quick temper. She would be criticized for moderate views amid a changing environment.

Her contributions, however, remain consequential. She was a co-founder and the first president of the National Organization for Women (NOW), and helped create both the National Women’s Political Caucus and the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws, now known as NARAL Pro-Choice America. But her name is most tied to The Feminine Mystique, the book that pushed her and other discontented housewives into the American consciousness alongside the ongoing Civil Rights Movement.

Lisa Tetrault, an associate history professor at Carnegie Mellon University, emphasizes Friedan’s argument that women were being burdened by society’s notions of how they should live their lives. At the time, many women were privately experiencing, she says, “a feeling that the problem was theirs alone.”

“Part of what The Feminine Mystique did was shift this conversation from this individual analysis,” she says. Friedan’s book showed them a systemic analysis of how society was undermining women in order to keep them at home under the moniker “occupation: housewife.”

Historian and Smith College professor emeritus Daniel Horowitz, who authored the 1998 Betty Friedan and the Making of The Feminine Mystique: The American Left, the Cold War, and Modern Feminism also contextualizes the book at a time when other works were examining the restlessness of suburban life.

“She was, as a professional writer, acutely aware of these books and the impact they had,” he says. “It’s also a wonderfully written book with appeals on all sorts of levels. It’s an emotionally powerful book.”

Born Bettye Naomi Goldstein on February 4, 1921 in Peoria, Illinois, both of her parents were immigrants. Her Russian father Harry worked as a jeweler, and her Hungarian mother Miriam was a journalist who gave up the profession to start a family. She attended Smith College, a leading women’s institution, as a psychology student, where she began seeing social issues with a more radical perspective. She graduated in 1942 and began postgraduate work at the University of California, Berkeley. Friedan would end up abandoning her pursuit of a doctorate after being pressured by her boyfriend, and also left him before moving to New York’s Greenwich Village in Manhattan.

From there she began work in labor journalism. She served as an editor at The Federate Press news service, and then joined the UE News team, the publication of the United Electric, Radio and Machine Workers of America. Her activism for working class women in labor unions, which included African Americans and Puerto Ricans, is crucial, says Horowitz, toward understanding the formation of her feminism.

However, he adds that her public embrace of labor unions during the feminist movement did not occur until the later years of her life, and that The Feminine Mystique omits her early radicalism. “Her feminism in the 50s and 60s is very self-consciously based on the civil rights movement,” he says. “She thinks of NOW as an NAACP for American women.”

Betty married Carl Friedan in 1947, and the couple had three children. The family moved from Queens to New York’s Rockland County suburbs in 1956, and she took on the job of housewife while freelancing for women’s magazines to add to the family income.

It was at a Smith reunion where Friedan found inspiration for what would become The Feminine Mystique. Intending to survey her classmates who had worried that a college education would get in the way of raising a family, what she instead found was a lack of fulfillment among the housewives. Other college-educated women she interviewed shared those sentiments, and she found herself questioning her own life role in the process.

To create The Feminine Mystique, Friedan included both the experiences of women she talked with and her own perspectives. She set about to deconstruct myths on women’s happiness and their role in society. “Gradually, without seeing it clearly for quite a while,” Friedan wrote in the book’s preface, “I came to realize that something is very wrong with the way American women are trying to live their lives today.

Betty Friedan by Byron Dobell, 1999 is also among the reformer’s images held by the National Portrait Gallery.

(NPG, gift of the artist, Byron Dobell © 2000 Byron Dobell)

Even before it was created the book was contentious: the president of the publishing house referred to its premise as “overstated” and “provocative.” And while it caught flak from some reviewers—a New York Times review rejected its premise and stated that individuals, not culture, were to blame for their own dissatisfaction—it was a major hit for female readers.

“It was quite fantastic the effect it had,” Friedan later said in an interview with PBS, “It was like I put into words what a lot of women had been feeling and thinking, that they were freaks and they were the only ones.”

Following the success of her book, Friedan moved back to New York City with her family, and in 1966 helped establish NOW with colleagues. She and her husband divorced in 1969, just a year before she helped lead the Women’s Strike for Equality that brought thousands of supporters to the city’s Fifth Avenue.

She pushed the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to end sex discrimination in workplace advertising, advocated for equal pay, and pressured changes to abortion laws, among others. Friedan also supported the Equal Rights Amendment, which failed to meet state ratification in 1982 but has since garnered renewed interest.

By the end of Friedan’s life, the movement had moved much farther than she had been able to keep up with. She had already been criticized by some feminists for a lack of attention to issues afflicting non-white, poor and lesbian women, and had made disparaging remarks toward the latter. When conservatives made cultural gains in the 1980s, she blamed radical members for causing it, denouncing them as anti-men and anti-family.

“One of the things that should come out of the women’s movement,” she told the Los Angeles Times, “is a sense of liberating and enriching ways of working out career and family life, and diverse ways of rearing our children and figuring out how to have a home and haven.”

Friedan had decidedly become a moderate voice among feminists, but nevertheless kept active. She served as a visiting professor at universities such as New York University and the University of Southern California, and in 2000 wrote her memoir Life So Far. In 2006 she passed away in Washington, D.C. on her 85th birthday.

Two canvas paintings depicting Betty Friedan are held by the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. One in acrylic, created in 1995 by Alice Matzkin, shows the reformer looking to the side with her hand behind her head in a contemplative pose. The other, painted with oil in 1999, was donated by the artist Byron Dobell in 2000 and features Friedan focused on the viewer with a vague sense of interest.

Looking back on Friedan’s seminal book, The Feminine Mystique, its narrow scope is important to recognize. As Graddy notes, it focuses on the aspirations of certain white college-educated housewives, rather than women who were not white nor middle class, among others.

“[T]hese are women who also have the leisure time to organize,” Graddy says, “They have the leisure time to become the women who start to organize different facets of feminism, who can organize now, who have connections that they can make and time that they can expend.”

Kelly Elaine Navies, a museum specialist in oral history at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, discusses the disconnect between The Feminine Mystique and black women of the time.

“It did not directly impact the African American community, as a large percentage of African American women worked outside of the home by necessity,” she writes in an email. “In fact, the prolific African American writer and activist, Pauli Murray, who was a co-founder of NOW, along with Freidan, did not even mention The Feminine Mystique in her memoir.”

The claim that The Feminine Mystique brought forward the “second wave” of feminism is also dubious. Not only is the characterization of waves misleading, as the calls made during different movements can overlap while individual waves feature competing beliefs, but as Graddy notes, the activism doesn’t simply fade when it receives less attention. She also mentions that describing the book as the beginning of the women’s movement only makes sense when applied to a certain group of feminists.

Tetrault says that The Feminine Mystique not only fails to discuss how the cultural expectations of the idealized housewife also afflicted non-white and poor women who could not hope to achieve that standard, but it also doesn’t provide meaningful structural solutions that would help women.

“In some ways Betty Friedan’s solution of just leaving home and going and finding meaningful work,” she says, “left all those structural problems that ungirded the labor that women provide through domesticity unaddressed, and that’s a huge problem.”

Even with the book’s flaws, it remains an important piece of history while having shaped the women’s movement. While Horowitz contends that a feminist movement still would have occurred without its publication, he says it nevertheless impacted the lives of hundreds of thousands of women.

And as Navies points out, the material it didn’t include caused black feminists to spread ideas that were more inclusive of American women in society, as they even formed their own term “womanist” to distinguish from the more exclusive “feminist.”

“In retrospect, as a catalyst for the second wave of feminism,” Navies writes, “The Feminist Mystique was a factor in the evolution of black feminism, in that black feminists were compelled to respond to the analysis it lacked and develop a theory and praxis of their own which confronted issues of race, class and gender.”

Tetrault adds that The Feminine Mystique’s message that societal constructs were harming women resonated throughout the whole of feminism.

“That would be a kind of realization, that would ripple through the movement on all kinds of different fronts. . . that the problem wasn’t them,” she says. “The problem was the set of cultural expectations and cultural structures around them.”

#History