WOMEN OVER 40 ROCK!

Claire’s Corner

I am always looking for little places in my mind that give me a calmness.  I can sometimes transfer that feeling by having conversations with friends or by doing certain protocols.  I call this comfort zone, Claire’s Corner. I need to recede to this area several times a day in order to have a successful day.  Finding this peace  helps me.

Who would ever think that by reading obituaries I find that sense of well being, but I do.  Not only do I often find joy in reading them but I can usually be inspired by them as well.  The way I do it, it’s not morbid at all. Of course there are certain rules that I ALWAYS follow:
1.   I always look at the dates first. It matters when the person was born.  The deceased always has to be born in the year 1928 or earlier. Therefore they are 80 years old or older.  Don’t get me wrong I am not necessarily saying that the person is old, only that they have had a real chance at living.  It’s important that the obituary is a celebration of life and not a tremendous sadness.
2.   I also prefer reading about women more than men and not just because I am part of an entertainment network on the Web that focuses on women over 40. It’s because, for the most part, women had it harder than men in that same time period.  And certainly harder than the women of today.  So their life stories are filled with struggles and obstacles that needed to be addressed and over come.  So their biographies are interesting and stimulating.
3.   It helps if you can read obituaries from fairly large cities because the quality of the reporter writing them is usually better.  Most young journalists have to start their careers writing obits. Also in a larger city if someone has a long obituary in the paper they probably had a pretty interesting life.

Let me give you an example:  In today’s LA Times, Sept.21,2008, there was an obituary for Mary Garber, 1926-2008.  She was a pioneering sports journalist. Mary loved journalism and sports and she wanted so badly to combine the two. But in the early 40’s women didn’t write about sports so she was relegated  to fashion.  But she never stopped talking about sports.  Finally the editor of the Twin City Sentinel in Winston-Salem, N. C., moved her from fashion to sports because she knew more about football and basketball than any man working on the paper. She continued to report on athletics for more than 40 years, paving the way for hundreds of female sportswriters.  Garber is the only woman to win sports journalism’s highest honor, the Red Smith Award given annually by the Associated Press Editors. She wrote about men’s sports as well as women’s.  She also routinely reported on black high schools and colleges when those teams were largely ignored by mainstream newspapers. She always went out of her way to make sure that everyone got a fair shake. Garber liked to tell the anecdote that a friend witnessed in the grandstands at a soapbox derby.  A young black child pointed Garber out to his friend and said, “That’s Miss Mary Garber.  And she don’t care who you are or where you’re from or what your are.  If you do something, she’s going to write about you.”

Claire Callaway, blogger for In the Trenches Productions, The First Entertainment Website for Women Over 40