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KAREN BARTA: Good morning. I'm Karen Barta with news from Minnesota Public Radio. A two-week strike against Hopkins-based Alliant Techsystems is over. Nearly 500 members of Local 1145 went on strike after rejecting a contract that would have made it easier for the defense contractor to move work to outside companies or outsource. Rod Bitz of Alliant says both sides have agreed on procedures to be followed in future outsourcing.

ROD BITZ: Procedures that would be used for comparing the costs of working on a contract internally versus external-- going to an external subcontracting. So we have a better process for comparing those costs and for making a decision as to where work will be done.

KAREN BARTA: Teamsters approved a three-year contract, which includes a 3% pay raise and a 15% increase in pension benefits. A week-long debate among Minnesota candidates for the US Senate starts tomorrow on the internet. The debate is sponsored by a nonpartisan group called Minnesota E-Democracy.

Boating deaths in Minnesota are down to an all-time low, and state officials are crediting a new life jacket law. So far this year, the state has had 11 boating fatalities, the lowest number on record. At this time last year, 20 people had died in boating accidents.

The state forecast, mostly cloudy. There is a chance of morning showers in the north and east, a chance of rain or snow showers in the northwest this afternoon. Highs from the middle 40s to middle 50s. And for the Twin Cities, mostly cloudy with a high around 55.

It's cloudy around the region this hour. In Duluth, it's 47 degrees, 42 in Saint Cloud, in Rochester, the current temperature is 46, and in the Twin Cities, it's 44. That's news from Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Karen Barta.

PAULA SCHROEDER: It's six minutes past 10 o'clock. This is Midmorning on Minnesota Public Radio. Today's programming is made possible in part by the advocates of Minnesota Public Radio. Contributors include G&K Services, providing textile leasing to business and industry and Department 56, marketers of gift ware and fine collectibles.

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Wouldn't it be great to have enough money to start a business doing something you really love? Joan Drury is one of the lucky ones who had that happen to her. She used money from the sale of the family business to buy a feminist publishing company called Spinsters Ink. Today on Voices of Minnesota, we'll hear from publisher, writer, and philanthropist Joan Drury.

Drury grew up in the Twin Cities and as a child started working in the family business, Woodlake Sanitary Service, a garbage-hauling company based in Richfield. She picked up garbage and worked in the office until the company merged with Browning-Ferris Industries in 1972. She used her share of the proceeds from the merger to indulge herself in what she considers her true vocation, books and writing.

In 1982, she bought Spinsters Ink, a feminist publishing company, then based in San Francisco, and moved it to the Twin Cities. She subsequently brought the company to Duluth, where the staff of six puts out six books a year on topics of interest and importance to women. Joan Drury says Spinsters got its start in the early 1970s when women started printing, publishing and distributing companies, as well as their own bookstores when big publishing houses refused to publish the work of feminist writers.

JOAN DRURY: They weren't interested in publishing very much by women at all. It wasn't an-- it wasn't necessarily even feminist. Women have always been the minority of writers who have been published. And mostly amongst other groups of people such as women and men of color, have been the people that just get ignored a great deal more by major publishing houses.

Also, then by the end of the '60s, early '70s, when the feminist movement was-- the second wave of feminism was just starting, there was a great deal of putting together brochures, and flyers and informational things that they want to get out there. And people found there was a problem actually finding printers even to do them. One of the most dramatic stories, which is the thing that, I think, catapulted us into the '70s and this decade of change in terms of women in print, was a group of women who-- a collective really, who put together a book, which is now quite famous. It's called Our Bodies, Ourselves.

SPEAKER 1: Oh, yes. I remember that.

JOAN DRURY: And it was put together by a group called the Boston Women's Health Collective. And it was just a pamphlet to start with. This was like '68 or '69 they did this and they could not find a printer to print it. They didn't even try to go to a publisher. I think that they were doing it themselves. But a printer would-- because it had words in it like vagina, clitoris, a not-heard-of word in the '60s.

It's odd to believe that now in the '90s. Lesbian, it was considered obscene by some printers. And printing process at that time was controlled almost entirely by men.

So they actually found a printing press to do it. It was a leftist, kind of communist, what we would have called a commie press back then. And this was not a publishing company. This was just a printing company. And that's how it first got printed.

And then they distributed them themselves. And then women started to realize we need to be in control of this ourselves. If we're going to distribute information that's going to make a difference in women's lives, we have to make sure that we're doing the whole process. And it actually started with printing.

But that's the kernel of how that all got started. And Spinsters Ink was started in '78 as part of that movement. We brought it here because we felt two things-- one, that Minnesota is a very political place and it's a very strong feminist state, and that we needed a major feminist house in this state. That's how we felt about those of us that were involved in the move.

And also because we really believe that Midwesterners and a regional Midwestern voice is still quite ignored by the mainstream publishers, which are mainly in the New York area and even those who publish on the West Coast. It's the same thing, both coasts. And you're in the Midwest. Anyone who is in the Midwest knows about this. There's a very Eastern-Western coastal attitude, prejudice really, about anything that's happening anywhere that's not in the coasts. And of course, wonderful things are happening all over this country.

SPEAKER 1: You have played a significant role in keeping Spinsters Ink alive. And it's an interesting story about your involvement in Spinsters Ink and how you were able to buy this. Your family ran the Woodlake Sanitary Service in Richfield, Minnesota.

JOAN DRURY: Oh, you've done your history.

[LAUGHS]

That's right.

SPEAKER 1: Right. So you went from-- not literally a garbage hauler, but at least someone who had been in that business. Did you do it too?

JOAN DRURY: I hauled some garbage too.

SPEAKER 1: All right.

JOAN DRURY: Not as a regular hauler ever, but sometimes I filled in. Everybody in the family did everything. And everybody that worked for my father had to haul in order to do any management because he believed that you needed to know the company on every level in order to be good at management.

So I was involved in the family business for years. That's right. And I also was a writer all that time.

I grew up in a family that revered books. And for me, as an adult who-- my major passion really is feminism, and then concurrent with that, books, words, to buy a feminist press was like a dream come true. That convergence of words and politics was just an ideal place for me.

SPEAKER 1: You were able to do that because the family business was sold to--

JOAN DRURY: That's right. In the '70s, the family business went public and merged with-- which was a tiny little company then, but became one of the largest garbage companies in the world, Browning-Ferris Industries. And so I inherited a great deal of money from that merger eventually and could look around and say, OK, what am I going to do with this to change the world? I mean, that's what I think is the purpose of having money. And the great joy of having money is what can you do to make this a better place to live.

So I did two things. I started a foundation that funds feminist social change in the state of Minnesota. And then I bought Spinsters Ink and brought it to Minnesota.

SPEAKER 1: When you brought the publishing house here, it had this history, of course, of being a feminist press and one that published a small number of books by feminist writers every year. And indeed, it is. It publishes, what, only six books a year now?

JOAN DRURY: That's correct.

SPEAKER 1: Is that how many you put out?

JOAN DRURY: Yeah, sometimes five.

SPEAKER 1: Why so few?

JOAN DRURY: It takes a lot of work to publish one book. We do three each season and the main reason is because that's what our staff can handle. We need more staff if we were going to do more and it's expensive. And it takes an enormous amount of time to oversee personnel. And I'd rather keep it small and do really well than have to worry about keeping the quality, not only in terms of-- we choose books that we feel are really well written and exceptional books.

But then the whole process of editing those books and marketing those books, we also want that to be a quality production. And creating the books themselves, putting them together, the covers, and the interior design and all of that, you get a lot of people. You have to have a lot of people just to manage them time wise. And it costs a lot of money.

We're right on the edge all the time and in fact are not making any money. But I am supporting the press until we do make money. And I hope that happens because I'd like to pay people a little better than we can. But keeping it small right now is a quality control thing, mostly.

SPEAKER 1: Now, you were based in Minneapolis for a while.

JOAN DRURY: That's correct.

SPEAKER 1: And you've moved up to Duluth?

JOAN DRURY: Yes.

SPEAKER 1: Which is becoming a nice little hotbed of publishing.

JOAN DRURY: That's right. Yeah.

SPEAKER 1: There's a very nice process of--

JOAN DRURY: Yeah, there's a lot of nice things going on there in terms of the publishing community. It's a very supportive place to be that way. And also, it's just beautiful. I mean, there is-- actually three of us went and we lost some employees then. But we've picked up new ones now and everyone's really happy to be there.

People that work with us either already live there or they wanted to live there. So it's super because they're in a place they want to be as well as in a job they want to be in.

PAULA SCHROEDER: You're listening to a conversation with Joan Drury, publisher of Duluth-based Spinsters Ink. This is Voices of Minnesota on Midmorning. I'm Paula Schroeder. It's 16 minutes past 10 o'clock.

Programming on Minnesota Public Radio is supported by 3M, who generously matches more than 900 employee contributions to Minnesota Public Radio. Coming up, a conversation with Jill Ker Conway about her latest collection of memoirs by women. But we'll continue now with our conversation with Joan Drury.

Joan Drury is one of the writers published by Spinsters Ink. She writes mysteries. Her main character is Tyler Jones, a San Francisco-based newspaper columnist and amateur detective who also happens to be a lesbian.

Drury thinks people have a much easier time confronting alternative lifestyles and controversial issues in fiction than they do in nonfiction. Her goal is to bring women on the edges of society acceptance by the mainstream. In Silent Words, she brings Tyler Jones to the North Shore.

JOAN DRURY: The character actually is a native San Franciscan and the first book takes place in San Francisco. But her mother was from the North Shore of Lake Superior right here in Minnesota. So in the second book, she comes back to tickle out a family mystery. And it was great fun writing about a place I know and love as well as I do, that area.

SPEAKER 1: Well, so you're running this business. You're writing books. Oh, by the way, you have a foundation, too, just in your spare time.

JOAN DRURY: I'm very lucky because I have a lot of really good people that work with me. And so I couldn't do all the things I do without all these women that are my co-workers.

SPEAKER 1: But the Harmony Women's Fund was established to?

JOAN DRURY: Yeah, it was established in 1990 to fund social change, feminist social change. And we spent maybe the first year sending out money lots of places because we hadn't focused yet. We discovered real quickly, this is a really big country and there's a really lot of things going on in it. So at the end of the first year, we decided to fund only projects in Minnesota because there's plenty to do right here. And in fact--

SPEAKER 1: Even though it is a politically active-- a very feminist state where there's been a lot of progress, you feel that there still is a lot to be done.

JOAN DRURY: Oh, there's always a lot to be done. People get an idea-- and especially it's interesting-- things about domestic abuse, for instance, they'll say, oh, didn't we take care of that 10, 15 years ago? Well, we took care of it in terms of letting people know it was actually happening. But believe me, it's still happening. And this state probably funds better than almost any in the country in terms of supporting issues around violence against women in the same way that we actually-- I think we are number one for sure in terms of funding arts in the country.

So it's a good state in terms of funding nonprofit endeavors, but there's never enough money anyway. So there's always room for more. Some of the most dramatically innovative feminist projects are happening in small towns all over the state.

So we found lots of things to fund in 1990-- I have to stop and think about this now, what year. It all starts running together in my head. '93, we established a women's writing retreat in Lutsen, which is really our major project right now.

Last year, I do have to tell you this, this little digression. I almost forgot this one. Last year, we sent 50 women to Beijing for the United Nations Conference on Women. Part of that was it was my 50th birthday year. And so I said, I want to do something that's really connected to that 50.

And so that's what Harmony did, was send 50. And that really was our major project last year with the exception of Norcroft because it was-- well, it was expensive, but it was also just incredibly, unbelievably complicated in terms of logistics. But we made a point of asking people to nominate women to us who were not necessarily activists.

We really wanted women to go who would never think that they would be chosen to go. And we did accomplish what we set out to. They really were "ordinary women," quote, unquote, who went. I remember one of the women telling me at the airport, we've never been in an airport before in our lives. And they were going to China.

SPEAKER 1: Wow!

JOAN DRURY: It was a wonderful project. We were really glad to be able to do it. Right now we're concentrating on Norcroft.

SPEAKER 1: This is the writing retreat.

JOAN DRURY: This is the writing retreat. And making the decision where we're going next. Partly because I'm a writer, I'm really aware of how hard it is for women to write, to find time, to find space.

A lot of men writers have wives who are taking care of all the details in their lives. Women writers who have husbands don't have that same setup usually. And so it's hard to actually get.

And it doesn't mean that we're only serving women who have kids or anything like that, but that's one piece of what makes it really hard to find the kind of time. We see writing as a revolutionary activity and that writing about women's lives are going to change things in the world. So this is part of our whole mission of creating feminist social change by giving women a place to write.

SPEAKER 1: So what does the future hold for Spinsters, and for Harmony and for Joan Drury? Are you going to be able to keep it all going?

JOAN DRURY: Oh, I think so. I think so for a while. I mean, that being able to mostly has to do with my energy. And luckily, I'm one of those people that's blessed with a lot of it. But I also sometimes think, gee, it'd be nice to have a simpler life.

[LAUGHS]

SPEAKER 1: Yes.

JOAN DRURY: Some people get to read for fun. I do actually read a lot for fun, but not as much as I used to. Let me tell you, I have to read manuscripts all the time. Some people get to-- I don't know, go on trips.

I don't have very much time to myself and I choose this. I'm not complaining. I feel absolutely blessed by having this opportunity to build my life the way I want it to be.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Joan Drury, publisher, writer and philanthropist. Her latest book, Silent Words, was published this month by Spinsters Ink.

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Today's programming are sponsored in part by a member of MPR in appreciation for the work done by PFLAG, Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays. It's 23 minutes past 10 o'clock.

IRA FLATOW: I'm Ira Flatow. In a new report, anti-hunger group Bread for the World says the United States has more children living in poverty than any other industrialized country. On the next Talk of the Nation, a look at how different nations take care of their children and what America can do to better protect its own kids from poverty. On the next Talk of the Nation, from NPR News.

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PAULA SCHROEDER: Talk of the Nation at 1 o'clock this afternoon here on Minnesota Public Radio. This is Midmorning. I'm Paula Schroeder.

Jill Ker Conway is a scholar and student of history. The former president of Smith College and creator of the Conway Fund for Research on Women, discovered early on in her academic career that it wasn't the usual stories of wars and conquests that intrigued her, but the influence of culture on people's lives, particularly the lives of women. In her native Australia, influenced as it was by British culture, women were in the background.

There were few published texts that contained any mention of women, and Jill Ker Conway satisfied herself with reading memoirs and the autobiographies written by women. Their stories inspired her to write her own. It was after she had written the highly-acclaimed Road from Coorain that her publisher suggested she collect the memoirs of those other women and put them into a book. The result was Written by Herself, an anthology of the writing of American women over a 150-year span from the slave narrative of Harriet Ann Jacobs to Gloria Steinem, who wrote about growing up with a mentally-ill mother.

Now, Jill Ker Conway has turned her attention to women from the British colonies. In Written by Herself Volume 2, she brings readers the words of women from Britain, Africa, Asia and the United States. Her work has focused on American women, and she wanted to see how culture and the times affected other women around the world.

JILL KER CONWAY: I think that in the United States, women are very much handicapped by a definition of femininity that makes them unfeminine if they're politically committed, and makes the media treat any woman who enters public life with particular brutality and scorn. And so I thought, I would look at the lives of 20th century women around the world using those who either wrote in English or whose memoirs had been translated into English. And I thought by looking at the old British Empire and Commonwealth, I would be able to look at the twin themes that have been so important in 20th century American history through another lens, that is, the battle against racism and against the subordination of women but seen in a totally different perspective. And as you'll see, if you look at the collection, most of the women whose memoirs I've included have been deeply politically committed and admired for it.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Yeah. One of the things you point out is that, of course, American women's political action has focused on themselves to a great degree. The suffragette movement-- the suffrage movement, rather. And of course, civil rights did have a component of women's rights within it as well.

But when you look at the colonies of Britain, you're talking about Africa and India. And oftentimes, the struggle was so much more against racism and classism as opposed to sexism. That the women in those countries didn't have the same-- or didn't see the same oppression that American women might have seen of women.

JILL KER CONWAY: Absolutely. And one of the most interesting things historically is that because women in the abolitionist movement compared their situation to slavery, they made the problems of women's subordination like those of slavery and made them essential to being female. Whereas, the women who are politically committed in this anthology working for Indian independence or in the battle against apartheid are free to work with men, see the struggle as a national one, and see their political commitment as part of affirming their femininity.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Aha! That's important.

JILL KER CONWAY: Yeah.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Because one of the things that you point out in your introduction is that one of the problems that literary critics have with women's autobiographies is that they denigrate themselves so much because they're accustomed to being denigrated.

JILL KER CONWAY: It's true.

PAULA SCHROEDER: That there is no identity of themselves that comes through in the autobiography. That it is more about their relationships with men or with political movements. Did you find that in women from these other cultures as well?

JILL KER CONWAY: Well, no. You see, in India, for instance, what's defining about you is caste, not sex or class. And of whatever caste background the Indian women whose memoirs I have chosen, take the responsibility to rule or to exercise power as being part of their femininity. And so Nehru's sister, Madam Pandit, thought that she was showing maternal care for her children by fighting for Indian independence.

And nobody ever criticized her for a life devoted to politics. She never felt that her husband resented her being away. He was equally politically committed. And she finished up being known as the mother of India and an admired female figure.

And the same thing goes for some of the South African women. Ruth First, whose memoir of 119 days in solitary confinement is in this collection, thought that she could love her children best by trying to build a juster world. And even in jail, even not seeing them, it didn't strike her that she loved them any less because she had chosen a political vocation that meant she would probably stay in jail, probably be killed as she finally was by the South African secret police.

PAULA SCHROEDER: But the struggle was so great--

JILL KER CONWAY: Yes.

PAULA SCHROEDER: --in South Africa. You have another memoir from another woman who grew up in South Africa, Mary Benson. And I found her story so interesting because she could be any woman in the way that she grew up. She went to an all-white girls boarding school, grew up in the suburbs, had quite a nice life, and wasn't really groomed for political activity.

JILL KER CONWAY: It's a wonderful story. This is the story of Mary Benson, still alive, one of the earliest workers for the African National Congress in the United Kingdom. She was a gifted writer and she was asked to return to South Africa at one point in her life to do a history of the African National Congress. It had been founded in 1912.

And in the late '50s, early '60s when she's going back, many of the original leaders were elderly. And, of course, Nelson Mandela and all the current leadership of the ANC had had to go underground to escape trial. And I'd love to read you a fragment--

PAULA SCHROEDER: Great.

JILL KER CONWAY: --that just shows you what this life was like. Because I always feel Mary Benson's life and growing up so British, it was so like mine growing up in Australia. And yet here this woman finishes up in disguise, going underground, carrying out an activity that will land her in prison for life if she's caught. And I've traveled every step of the way with her, and I just wonder how I'd manage.

[LAUGHS]

She's in South Africa traveling around to interview the members of the ANC leadership, and she has an appointment to see Nelson Mandela. And she tells us Mandela had eluded the police for more than nine months. "One night in mid November, I waited expectantly in the living room of the modest bungalow where I'd visited him before. As he came in, looking very fit, thinner and bearded, he cast off the chauffeur's white coat and peaked cap he'd been wearing. He was in an ebullient mood just back from touring Natal and the Cape.

'A wonderful experience visiting the rural areas,' he said. 'You can't comprehend unless you go right there with the people.' It was eight years since he'd been confined by bans to Johannesburg.

I recalled our first encounter at that time. In the Indian Congress office, I'd come upon him in the thick of a loud and furious quarrel with Yusuf Cachalia. Quite unembarrassed, they broke off to respond to my question about the defiance campaign. Neither he nor Yusuf later remembered the incident, and he had long ago learned to control his hot temper.

Now he could spare only an hour, he said apologetically. Pressure was mounting, but he seemed amazingly relaxed as he described the narrow escape he'd had a few days earlier. 'I was waiting on a corner in town wearing that chauffeur's outfit, when the car due to pick me up failed to arrive. It's vital,' he broke off to explain, 'to be absolutely punctual when you're functioning underground.

And I saw coming towards me one of the special branch, an African member I knew by sight. He looked straight at me. I thought, it's all up.

But he went by. And as he did so, he winked and gave me the ANC salute.' The incident made Nelson roar with laughter, but he also regarded it as an example of the hidden support the ANC had even among the police.

When the hour was up, he offered me a lift. And after putting on the coat and peaked cap, he let me out to a car that was very much the worse for wear. We drove off with me as Madam in the back and he as chauffeur in the front.

But the engine kept sputtering to a stop. Each time it seemed an eternity before he managed to rev it back to life. At any moment, a police car could have driven by and stopped to see what was wrong. He joked about it, but this was the only transport available to him. At last, the car coughed its way to within walking distance of my sister's flat. We said goodbye."

PAULA SCHROEDER: Just think about the way she was feeling at that time. And yet her words about Nelson Mandela were one of ebullient, joking, having a good time.

JILL KER CONWAY: Yes.

PAULA SCHROEDER: He didn't exhibit fear in this.

JILL KER CONWAY: He did not. And she's amazing, of course, because she later befriended the famous Afrikaans jurist and lawyer, Bram Fischer, who also eventually parted company with the White South African government and himself had to go into hiding. And he was very depressed in hiding because his beloved wife had died very recently. And Mary Benson is asked to give him emotional support and help him get information, carry letters, and so on and so forth.

And she finishes up falling in love with him. And some of the most lyrical passages in the memoir are about picnics they had in disguise. She'd have a wig, and dark glasses, and a false identity. And of course, so would he.

And yet they had this intense and very beautiful relationship, which I find heartrending. Of course, he was eventually caught, tried, jailed. She was never allowed to see him again. But she's an amazing character.

PAULA SCHROEDER: She became a political exile herself, didn't she?

JILL KER CONWAY: Yes, she was eventually banned and had to leave South Africa and was allowed back just once to be with her father at the end of his life. And the words she writes about leaving when she knows she can't return, and that's the last thing that can ever bring her back, so she believes, absolutely heartrending. Of course, she's back now. She goes frequently, tremendously elated by what's happened.

PAULA SCHROEDER: We're talking with Jill Ker Conway, and she is the editor of the second volume of Written by Herself. And these are memoirs of women largely around the time of the decline of the British imperialist society and from some women who lived in Africa and in India, of course, countries that had been colonized by the British. Did you find in looking for memoirs that there were very many instances of women joining together as women's organizations to do some of this political work?

JILL KER CONWAY: No, that's one of the most interesting things. And it's a striking difference between the United States and some other parts of the English-speaking world. In the United states, the tradition of the abolition movement, the temperance movement, meant that it was second nature to American women to form women's organizations to address social problems.

But in South Africa, the women were very, very important in the battle against apartheid. They joined other kinds of political organizations, trade unions, the communist party. It didn't occur to them to create an all-female enterprise.

Now, in India, there was an all-India women's congress, of which Madam Pandit, for instance, was the head for a long time. And Indian women did band together for purposes related to women usually. They didn't do what many American women did, which was create the organization that was going to battle to abolish slavery, which was a national problem. It went way beyond their sex.

I think the difference is that in American society, people had so few institutions to model themselves upon. And actually, both the Methodist, and the Quaker and the Baptist church had women's bible study groups. And they were initially the cells from which all sorts of other women's reform organizations were built, the abolition movement, the temperance, the suffrage movement. And I think that's an inheritance of history plus the high status accorded women provided they stayed within their sphere in the United States. And that evangelical separating sect tradition, which was so critical in America, wasn't present in, say, South Africa, or India, or in my native Australia or New Zealand.

PAULA SCHROEDER: You mentioned a little while ago that in India, caste had much more to do with the role women played in political events than did race or gender. Was that true as well in some of these other countries? Because it seems that a lot of the women who wrote memoirs that are collected in this collection had privileged backgrounds, came from more of an upper class background.

JILL KER CONWAY: Well, the difference is that in a caste society, caste overrides sex so that nobody feels demeaned by being ruled over by a Brahmin woman. So, for instance, India has had women prime minister, so has Sri Lanka, so as Bangladesh. And those are societies in which it's OK if the person is upper caste. You don't feel humiliated by them being in a position of authority.

What's happened in the democracies, which were the product of the expansion of Europe to North America, or Australia or New Zealand is that they have done away with all those hereditary caste statuses. The American founding fathers deliberately abolished titles and all signs of rank. And so what remains are social boundaries are just too-- and they have to do with the physical body and they are race and sex. And those become the key boundaries for subordination and domination in the society. And that's why they're so difficult to remove.

I have examples of women who are from more, either lower caste background or working class background. Emma Mashinini, who's one of my great heroines, great trade union worker in South Africa who organized textile workers and then workers in the retail trades, came from a family in what became Soweto where the parents' marriage was broken up by the father having to travel three hours a day to work and then three hours a day home. And eventually, he just stopped making it and her family broke up. And she worked as a textile laborer herself for quite a long time and got herself her own education. Some of the other women are definitely of all upper middle class background, people like Elspeth Huxley, who writes so wonderfully about Kenya and of course, Isak Dinesen, whose memoir is also excerpted, is from Scandinavian aristocratic family.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Now that you have found all of these memoirs and actually talked to a lot of these women in both volumes 1 and 2 of Written by Herself, have you discovered any common reasons that women become politically active?

JILL KER CONWAY: I think the basic radicalizing experience for a woman is to discover that the myth about women's place in the world in no way compares to the reality, and that the social constraints which limit the possibility of doing anything about that are male deployed and controlled. And that seems to cross all cultural boundaries. But a person like Madam Pandit, Nehru sister, since she never felt in any way disadvantaged by being female, was feminist on behalf of women of lower status and caste. But her radicalization was her experience shared with her brother and all those who became followers of Gandhi, that Indian culture, which was older and greater than European culture in their view, was being destroyed by British rule.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Why is it important to you personally to have these voices heard and read?

JILL KER CONWAY: Well, I believe that women in this country particularly, are given a very misleading picture of what it means to be female. And they are taught to internalize what I call a romantic life plot. And everybody knows that from opera.

The soprano is beautiful, very finely-tuned emotionally, has no mind. And she meets the tenor in the first act and they sing a great duet. And then scheming relatives, or war, or revolution or something parts them and eventually they're reunited in the last act. And she sings a glorious aria and then she drops dead on the stage.

And that's because the romantic life plot has no life for a woman after she's met her lover. Her life is subsumed within his. And that tradition is carried on in the tradition of American romantic fiction. It's there in Hemingway or Fitzgerald. And of course, you can see it every day on MTV if you look at that wretched production of current media.

And that means that a woman construes her life as one in which she is acted upon rather than acting on her own behalf. And I am interested in having women think about their life history and rewrite that plot in their own minds, realizing that they do act on their own behalf, always have, always will. And I want to get them to tell their sons and daughters that they have so the daughters would be empowered and the sons would learn to admire and love women who were strong and self-directing.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Jill Ker Conway is the editor of Written by Herself Volume 2, Women's Memoirs from Britain, Africa, Asia and the United States. And she is also the author of her own autobiography in two parts, The Road from Coorain and True North. You're listening to Midmorning on Minnesota Public Radio. It's about 12 minutes before 11 o'clock.

If you've ever called 911, maybe you've been impressed with the cool, level-headed person who took your call. Every day, 911 operators or telecommunicators, as they call themselves, field hundreds of calls ranging from reports of serious crimes to confused people looking for fireworks displays or voter information. In today's odd jobs, we meet Patrick [? Heffernan, ?] who handles 911 calls in downtown Saint Paul.

PATRICK: 911 emergency. Hello, 911.

[BEEPING]

You have to be willing to listen to people who are not always cordial, be willing to try and discern what it is that they're after when they're calling. They might be frantic. They might be upset. They might be scared.

And you have to try and find a way to get through to them, to let them know that you can help them some way. There are other times where you have to let people know that there are certain things we can't do. The police department can't do everything for people.

Your emotional levels, when you answer the phone, go up and down with the people that you talk to. And sometimes, you have to use different techniques to get them to stop for just a moment, listen to what you're saying, and give you the information. OK, what's the plate number?

[BACKGROUND CHATTER]

If you have a windy day, you're going to see a lot of alarms, burglar alarms start going off left and right. And when there's a full moon, the phones just ring like crazy. So we prepare ourselves and we watch the calendar for when the full moon is coming. And I think we brace ourselves just a little bit.

Thank you very much. Bye-bye. We do get a number of strange calls. Woman came back from out of the country and found some frogs in her suitcase that apparently hopped in.

Some time along the trip, her luggage had been lost. And she didn't know what to do with them, wanted to get rid of them, and was afraid that she might be doing something illegal. So she wanted to know who to contact.

We put her in touch with animal control to try and deal with that. And we get-- animal complaints can be unusual. People with owls, and bats and raccoons in their house wondering how to get rid of them. Most of the calls, though, you just blur into the background by the end of the night when you're done.

It's not uncommon on an average night to pick up the phone 200, 250 times on a busy night. It might be 350 to 400 times. So after a while, you don't retain a lot of what you were talking about.

He had called earlier about some kids that were on top of a building near there. Are those kids still out there? Do you know which way they went?

When you're out driving around, you do pick out some of the spots where you tend to get a lot of calls from. And sometimes you think a little bit about it as you drive by about what really happened, or what went on, how did it get resolved. One thing that I learned in being in this job is we only get one side of the story. When the officer gets out, there may not be anywhere near the drama or anywhere near the excitement or urgency that we heard over the phone.

On call Police Operator Heffernan. May I help you? Just a moment. Cathy, there's GOA.

[BEEPING]

PAULA SCHROEDER: 911 telecommunicator Patrick [? Heffernan. ?] Today's odd jobs report was produced by Minnesota Public Radio's Sasha Aslanian. It's eight minutes before 11 o'clock. This is Midmorning. I'm Paula Schroeder.

GARY EICHTEN: Next month, besides voting for president and Congress, Minnesota voters will be electing a new legislature. And coming up on Midday, we'll find out what difference it makes who wins. Hi, this is Gary Eichten inviting you to join us.

House Minority Leader Steve Sviggum will be here to discuss Republican priorities. Assistant Senate Majority Leader Ember Reichgott Junge will also be here to outline DFL priorities. And you'll have a chance to call in with your questions and comments. Midday begins each weekday morning at 11:00 on Minnesota Public Radio, KNOW FM 91.1 in the Twin Cities.

Well, in the weather today, we're going to see some precipitation. And depending on where you are, it could be rain or snow showers. Northwestern Minnesota, the most likely area to see some snow today and there is a chance of rain as well. Highs today from the mid 40s to the mid 50s. Rain likely in the south tonight, possibly mixed with snow in the southwestern part of our region. And there is a chance of rain or snow showers in Northern Minnesota as well.

Overnight lows from the low 30s in the northwest to the lower 40s in the southeast. Tomorrow, rain likely in the south and east, possibly mixed with snow still in the southwest. And highs will be mainly in the 40s. Now, looking ahead to the rest of the week, it's going to be downright cold on Wednesday with highs from 35 to 45 degrees with a good chance of snow in Western Minnesota. Rain becoming mixed with snow in the east.

In the Twin Cities today, look for a high around 55, mostly cloudy skies. Northwest winds at 10 to 15 miles per hour. Rain likely after midnight tonight and continuing tomorrow during the day.

Tomorrow's high in the upper 40s. It's six minutes before 11:00. Here's Garrison Keillor in the Writer's Almanac.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

GARRISON KEILLOR: And here is the Writer's Almanac for Monday. It's the 21st of October, 1996. The birthday of Frances Fitzgerald and Ursula Le Guin, of Dizzy Gillespie and of Alfred Nobel, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who wrote The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. It was on this day in 1959 on Fifth Avenue in New York City, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum opened. The only building by Frank Lloyd Wright in New York City, a spiral ramp winding around a six-story high atrium topped by a glass dome.

It's Frances Fitzgerald's birthday, New York City, 1940, the journalist, author of Fire in the Lake, Cities on the Hill. It's the birthday of science fiction and fantasy writer Ursula Le Guin, 1929, in Berkeley, California, wrote her first stories in the sci-fi magazine, Fantastic, in the early 1960s. It was in 1917 on this day, the first American troops arrived at the front line at Sommerviller, France during World War I.

Cheraw, South Carolina, 1917, John Birks Gillespie was born, trumpeter, bandleader, composer, bebop, pioneer. Dizzy Gillespie, who in 1939 joined Cab Calloway's band, began experimenting with new chord progressions and syncopated rhythms that eventually evolved into the bebop sound in collaboration with Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, and Kenny Clark. A national financial panic began on this day in 1907 in New York City.

1879, at Menlo Park, New Jersey, Thomas Edison demonstrated the first practical incandescent lamp. He said, "The longer it burned, the more fascinated we were. There was no sleep for any of us for 40 hours."

It's the birthday in Stockholm, 1833, of Alfred Bernhard Nobel, chemist, founder of the Nobel Prizes. He discovered that nitroglycerin could be absorbed by a packing material called kieselguhr and that the dry material could then be handled safely. Thus, did he invent dynamite.

Clergyman and poet Samuel Francis Smith, born 1808 in Boston. He wrote the words, to "My Country, Tis of Thee." It's the anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar, 1805. The British Royal Navy defeated the French and Spanish fleets, Admiral Horatio Nelson commanding. He was mortally wounded in the battle.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, born in Ottery St Mary, England, on this day in 1772. And it was on this day in 1769, Spanish explorers first spotted San Francisco Bay. Here's a poem for today, a poem about an umbrella by Virginia Hamilton Adair, "Now You Need Me."

"When the rains come, you remember our old closeness humping along in the wet. You grope the dark where I hang morosely by my crooked neck. You pull off my cover, shake me till my ribs jiggle, and a moth flies out. Your hand reaches under my black skirt and up one leg, thin as a cane, until I open wide with a rusty squawk, hovering above you like a dark and loving raven, said the old umbrella, her night full of holes."

A poem by Virginia Hamilton Adair from her collection, Ants on the Melon, published by Random House and used by permission here on the Writer's Almanac for Monday, October the 21st, made possible by Cole's History Group, publishers of American history and other magazines. Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.

PAULA SCHROEDER: So you might have been reading about Frank Sulloway's book called Born to Rebel, about birth order. It's said to be the first scientifically valid study of the influence of birth order on personality. He'll be on Midmorning tomorrow. And then at 10 o'clock Gerry Spence, the trial attorney.

Tune in then. I'm Paula Schroeder. Thanks for listening today.

JON GORDON: Java grows up. I'm John Gordon. And on the next Future Tense, bill loving on the internet programming language Java. Future Tense in one-half hour on Minnesota Public Radio, KNOW FM 91.1.

PAULA SCHROEDER: You're listening to Minnesota Public Radio. 44 degrees at KNOW FM 91.1, Minneapolis, Saint Paul. We're heading for a high of 55 degrees today with northwesterly winds at 10 to 15 miles per hour.

Rain is likely after midnight tonight. Look for a low near 42. Tomorrow, occasional rain with a high in the upper 40s.

GARY EICHTEN: Good morning. It's 11 o'clock and this is Midday on Minnesota Public Radio. With Monitor Radio's George Bauer, I'm Gary Eichten. In the news this morning, the US Supreme Court has refused to hear a challenge to the military's don't ask, don't tell policy. A former Navy lieutenant had argued that the policy violates the free speech rights of homosexuals.

Workers at Twin Cities based Alliant Techsystems are back at work today after a two-week strike. Outsourcing was a major issue in that dispute. Meanwhile, striking Canadian Auto Workers have reportedly reached an agreement with GM over outsourcing. The US envoy to the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks reportedly will leave the Middle East, having failed to break the deadlock over the Israeli withdrawal from Hebron. And Minnesota Republicans are launching a new ad campaign targeting DFL legislative ethics.

Those are some of the stories in the news today. Coming up over the noon hour, we'll take a closer look at the fight for control of the Minnesota legislature and what difference it's going to make whether Republicans or Democrats are in the majority. That discussion comes up over the noon hour.