Stories of Sage Supporters

Bold, But True Words

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Sue Rankin is the person responsible for me being the Director of Penn’s LGBT Center.  Bold, but true words.  I was in a Ph.D. program I did not like, as the field was becoming more quantitative and I did not feel supported in what I wanted to study or who I was.  I admit I was in a rough patch personally, having arrived on campus barely six months after the sudden death of my partner, so I am sure faculty did not know quite how to treat me, nor did I even know how to grieve or really do my best work (more info on that in person if you really want to know about it).  I found solace in a good shrink (thank you, Mary!) the campus LGBT graduate student group, and Sue who advised us.  I soon became the group’s co-chair, organizing protests against Rene Portland, Pride Week events, and watching the heterosexual support group S.T.R.A.I.G.H.T from afar (yes, it existed).  I even had death threats and my taillights broken out. 

Through it all, Sue was there with a listening ear and hosting pick-up football games at her house.  She was the former varsity softball coach who was asked to resign because she was lesbian, who stayed at the same school to do diversity work as an administrator.  Sue was strong, committed to her work and students, would tell you like it is, and just plain fun.  More importantly, she was a successful, humble, approachable lesbian who did not let obstacles stand in her way.  Before Sue I did not really know any ‘grown-up’ queer folks who were out and happy.  I mean, when my mother met her, she finally felt that I could have a livable life because Sue did.  It was big. 

So, how is Sue specifically responsible for my career as a paid queer?  I wanted to leave my Ph.D. program after my M.A. and went to talk to her about it and where my future may lie.  In typical Sue style, she said it was obvious I loved my activism and diversity work and I should consider doing that fulltime.  I did not even know it was possible.  She continued, saying her pal Bob was hiring someone at Penn’s LGB Center (no ‘T’ yet) on limited funds (read: salary not guaranteed beyond two years) and I should apply.  Plus, she would tell him I was ‘the best thing since sliced bread.’  You can figure out the rest of the story since I am still at the Center and now the Director. 

We have stayed in touch intermittently over the years, as I grew as a professional and Sue became a professor who now owns the top campus climate consulting business is the nation.  I always know I can drop her a line and she is there.  Thanks, Sue.

Fast Friends, Despite Our 60-year Age Gap

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Mariam Chamberlain was 85 when we met. I was 25, a young, curmudgeonly feminist, as my friends and I, working at various non-profit feminist organizations in New York City, described ourselves.  Despite our 60-year age gap, Mariam and I became fast friends.  When she got to the office – yes she still came into the office every day, taking the subway downtown from her home in Midtown – we would sit and chat. I would troubleshoot her computer questions and help her find what young feminists were doing on the new online platform called “blogs.” She would tell me stories about this feminist and the other; scholars and activists I had only read in grad school, but whom Mariam counted as friends.

With age difference often comes power imbalance, but I never felt this with Mariam. Not only was she sure to invite the younger staff members in our office to a gala or research symposium that we were otherwise unable to afford (remember, we worked at non-profits!), but she asked, and genuinely listened to, what we had to say.  Mariam’s sincerity made younger feminists like myself feel heard, and she showed up for us whenever presented with the opportunity to do so.

Mariam’s and my friendship was a model of what intergenerational relationships can – and should – be.  The world lost Mariam five years ago, but I feel her presence in my life every day. On the eve of her hundredth birthday, I find myself reflecting on intergenerational friendship, rededicating myself to seek and cultivate relationships with current and former students, as well as to maintain relationships with those from different generations who have mentored me along the way.

Generational Thing

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Margaret Vandenburg knew I was becoming her. Not her, of course, but like her — what she is. A lesbian, professor, writer, mentor. You’re incurable, she told me smiling, you could never make it in civilian life. She didn’t mean that I was gay but that I cared too much about ideas. Sitting in her office on that wooden schoolroom chair three feet away from her with blazing cheeks, a college senior, I became, incurably, a lesbian professor. Margaret rejects essentialisms, including “born that way” conceptions of homosexuality. I suppose that I was born a lesbian, though I became one too. Desire is a learned behavior. I read novels, I watched films, I went to bars, I cut my hair. I sat in lecture halls and blushed continuously, magnetized. I looked at Margaret Vandenburg and wrote down everything she said. In time, the words like empty bowls filled up: androgyny, queer, butch, dyke. Could it have been otherwise? We don’t like to say that knowledge is the requisite to intimacy; we don’t like to leave desire in the hands of reason. Yet the parts of me that are incurable are those that Margaret helped to shape. She taught me my desire. At Barnard College, Margaret’s teaching and belief reorganized my own — this orienting and reorganizing was my college education, and some days I still wake up there. I’d be a stranger to myself without it and without her. How could anything be otherwise?

Hard Won Confidence

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Catherine Cunningham Mahoney had hard won confidence.  She was a sharp dresser, a great dancer, and she knew how to write in squiggly characters that she alone could read (I later learned that this was stenography). She was very smart even though she was not highly educated. The child of immigrants who lost her mother at an early age, she was forced to leave school after the eighth grade. In her teens, she took courses in stenography (so she could get a job) and elocution (she wanted to speak without a New York accent). Despite her limited education, she knew more than most college graduates: she remained the family expert on grammar even after her own children surpassed her schooling. She was also a beautiful writer, the person we turned to when we needed help with a speech or an essay. She encouraged her children and grandchildren to go to college.  Although she valued higher education, she had no time for people who put on airs. As if to deflate her own bourgeois ambitions, she named the fur she wore around her neck “George,” after the deceased family cat. She exuded kindness, but she also harbored a fierce competitive spirit. She taught us the song, “Anything you can do, I can do better,” and admonished us not to count on praise, reward, or recognition but to “take pride in a job well done.” In addition to making hard work look fun, she also shared life lessons, urging us to be disciplined and to “keep our wits about us.” Somehow, without a mother’s guidance but with the help of her sister, family, and friends she learned how to move through the world with ease. Classy and clever, in the best sense of that word, she embodied grace and confidence.

My Inspiration...the HENS

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My life has been so inspired by a group of women affectionately called the HENS.

This name was given to us by our daughters and nieces.  Growing up as teenagers we attended different high schools and some attended college but our bind wasn’t broken.   We raised our children together even those who didn’t have children we all became that special group of aunties loving everyone’s children.

The Hens are a unique group of women. All of us have different personalities and talents but this was not by accident it was for a divine purpose. To educate, encourage, uplift, correct and strengthen each other to keep moving forward. We have learned to find what was hidden underneath, fear, loneliness, discouragement and unforgiveness.

We don’t have to be what everyone expects us to be.  We are wonderfully designed and must be true to our “Respectful Self”. Having the same group of sister support for over 40 years is a rarity.  Growing from teens into seasoned women aging from 50’s thru 70’s we have shared lots of experiences.  Through it all The Hens is a legacy we are proud to share.  It has proven the power of sisterhood which stands the test of time.  We are living our best life and have passed this love and strength to our daughters, granddaughters and grandnieces.  When the name HENS was given to us many years ago no one knew how we would grow to love it and how wonderful it feels to be called HEN!

Staff are Often the Least Appreciated

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I want to use this opportunity to recognize some of the amazing staff members that support the work we do at the Annenberg School for Communication.  Staff are often the least appreciated group of people at a university, even though teaching and learning would be impossible without their personal and professional commitment to these spaces.  Here are three people at Annenberg who have provided incredible support since I first came to the University of Pennsylvania.

Kelly Fernandez is the Executive Assistant to Annenberg’s Dean and she is a rock star of awesomeness and capability.  From the moment of planning my visit to interview at Penn, Kelly has been outgoing and capable, welcoming and reassuring.  She manages to support people in a way that recognizes we’re not just scholarly output machines, but human beings with everyday lives.  She is super smart and super funny (and also has great taste in music).  Kelly is invaluable to my department, to our students and faculty, and to my personal sanity. 

Sharon Black is the Librarian at Annenberg.  She goes out of her way to support students and faculty with research projects, but she also has her own interests in scholarship, and is a regular at talks and lectures around campus.  No matter what the topic of a talk was, I can always count on a follow-up email from Sharon to share her thoughts and reactions.  Sharon is also committed to different volunteer activities that blow me away – for years she has worked with women who are incarcerated to develop life skills and support their creative writing efforts.  As a former librarian myself, I can say that Sharon embraces the best components of library work: intellectual curiosity and a commitment to her community.

Deb Porter is the Senior Building Administrator at Annenberg and she is a badass.  There’s no other way to say it.  The building runs smoothly in large part because of her and when I plan an event at Annenberg, no matter how big or small, Deb always takes a lot of pride in making sure that it happens seamlessly.  Somehow Deb also has the energy to stay on top of *every* current political issue, and I’ve come to count on her commentary on current events.  Deb is committed to Annenberg as an institution in ways that are all too easily ignored, and my respect for her is tremendous.

Thulani’s Girls

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At one point or another, we all ended up living in Thulani’s house in Fort Greene.  We crashed, for a week or a couple of months, until we got (back) on our feet or figured ourselves out.  People called us “Thulani’s girls,” as though we were the children she never herself bore.  And certainly, after we graduated from college and moved to New York City to pursue our dreams of journalism, dance, theatre, as well as the more mundane aspects of making a living and finding love, Thulani was our model and our inspiration.  Having grown up in the segregated south and been part of the anti-war and black power demonstrations at Columbia University as an undergraduate at Barnard in 1968, Thulani moved to San Francisco to become a journalist.  There, she was part of the original collective that spearheaded the development of innovative theatrical events like Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf.  After moving to New York City, Thulani went on to become a celebrated novelist, librettist, poet, screenwriter, and playwright, and she was the first black staff writer and senior editor at the Village Voice.  Thulani was the black Renaissance woman we all wanted to be, crossing artistic and scholarly genres with ease while maintaining her group of friends and family close, showing us how to work hard, play hard, and love hard, always encouraging our dreams and never letting on how tiresome we must have sounded when we imagined we were the first to experience this or that slight, or to have come up with this or that creative insight.  In her non-judgmental way, Thulani showed us how to be ourselves, and how to carry community with us while doing so.