This Week: Downing, SPRING FORWARD and Piercy, SEX WARS
March 1st, 2007
March 9, 2007 on WMUA 91.1 FM
In honor of International Women’s Day, we talk with Marge Piercy about SEX WARS, her novel of the first American feminist movement.
Also, we talk with Michael Downing about SPRING FORWARD: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time.
And check the new podcast post below for a whole extra show this week: A St. Patrick’s Day Special.
March 8 is International Women’s Day, which has been observed since 1909 when the Socialist Party of America first declared National Woman’s Day. It arose from a time of extraordinary activism around the issue of equal rights for women, the era of the first American feminist movement, with leaders such as Susan B. Anthony, Victoria Woodhull and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. These historical figures are some of the major characters in Marge Piercy’s latest work of fiction, SEX WARS: A NOVEL OF THE TURBULENT POST-CIVIL WAR PERIOD. In this richly imagined book set in New York City during the Gilded Age, Piercy explores the changing attitudes toward women, minorities, religion, and sexuality.
And it’s time again for Daylight Savings Time. Popularly billed as a measure to benefit the nation’s farmers, DST actually was instituted for the benefit of big business, according to Michael Downing. His book, SPRING FORWARD, unravels the worldwide confusion occasioned by decades of clock manipulation. Both funny and informative, it deconstructs the history and controversy around this most strange idea.
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