Women

It's been ages since I've visited blogspot and it's beean ages since anyone else visited. Big deal. I just desided to pop in cause I've suddenly had an idea, a post idea I mean. But before I begin: I'm still ill, not getting better, getting bored, not getting fresh air, getting more bored, getting cheered up when somebody calls me and tells all fresh gossip I missed, getting fatter(seriously, how can I entertain myself?! Reading, watching tv, doing math, drawing and eating of course! Thats my problem: when I'm nervous I eat, when I'm tired I eat, I eat even when I'm bored...! Oh god, help me!!!). Thats it. End of story. Nothing interesting so far. And far beyond. Boring, isn't it...?

Ok, now back to the studio. Just had an idea to post some background info on women I admire. Not in every way of course. I mean, I can't agree with Constance, but still I admire her. The same with everybody else. Ok, here it is.

Countess Constance Markievicz

Countess Constance Georgina Markievicz (née Gore-Boot) (1868-1927)born at 7 Buckingham Gate, London, on 4 February 1868. Her father, the philanthropist Henry Gore-Booth, was also an Arctic explorer and a landlord in the west of Ireland, and was married to Georgina May Hill, of Tickhill Castle, York. Constance was educated by a governess at Lissadell, Co. Sligo where the family held extensive estates. She was the eldest of three daughters and two sons and her sister, Eva Gore-Booth would later become a campaigner for women’s suffrage. In the monarch jubilee year of 1887 she was presented at court to Queen Victoria and was called ‘the new Irish beauty’, and took her place in society as a member of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy. She was also noted as a fine horsewoman, and as an excellent shot. William Butler Yeats was a frequent guest at Lissadell. After listening to his stories of Irish myths and folklore and to his passionate political ideas, she was stirred to action. At that time women were not allowed to vote in elections or to become Members of Parliament. Markievicz decided to join the suffragettes who were fighting for women’s rights. Around this time she joined the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, a cause she was to remain devoted to throughout her life.

In 1893 she moved to London to study at the Slade School of Art in London. In 1898 she moved to Paris where she continued to study art at the Julian School. While there she met and later married fellow artist and Count Casimir Dunin-Markievicz. The Polish widower’s family owned a large estate in Ukraine. After travelling abroad, they returned to Sligo where their daughter Maeve was born in 1901. Maeve was raised by her grandparents. In 1903 Markievicz moved to Dublin where she began to make a name for herself as a landscape artist. Dublin was a vibrant city at the time, a centre for artists, actors, writers and politicians. Markievicz was attracted to the Gaelic League and the Abbey Theatre. She helped to found the United Arts Club in 1907, which helped bring together people of the artistic renaissance. Markievicz expressed her dissatisfaction with this kind of life ‘nature should provide me with something to live for, something to die for’. In 1906 she rented a cottage at Ballally, Co. Dublin, and came across a number of old copies of the revolutionary publications the Peasant and Sinn Féin left by a previous tenant, the poet Pádraig Colum. After reading these, Markievicz knew she had found a cause to inspire her life. Her interest in the struggle for freedom was aroused.

Markievicz became active in nationalist politics and her aim was to make Ireland an independent nation. In 1908 she joined Sinn Féin and Maud Gonne’s women group, Inghinidhe na hÉireann (Daughters of Ireland). She also became a regular contributor to Bean na hÉireann (Women of Ireland), Ireland’s first women’s nationalist journal and the United Irishman. She went to Manchester in 1908 and stood unsuccessfully for election with her sister Eva, who was deeply involved in social reform. At the suggestion of Bulmer Hobson, she founded Na Fianna Éireann (1909), an organisation for boys, who were taught to drill and use arms. The movement aimed to establish an independent Ireland and also to promote the Irish language.

In 1911 Markievicz was arrested when she took part in a demonstration against the visit of King George V to Ireland. She worked closely with James Connolly who fought for Irish nationalism and social equality. She ran a soup kitchen in Liberty Hall during the 1913 Dublin lockout. Markievicz then joined the Irish Citizens Army. She had separated from her husband about 1909 and later worked as a war correspondent in the Balkans. She was strongly opposed to Irish involvement in the Great War and co-founded the Irish Neutrality League in 1914. During the 1916 Rising Markievicz was appointed second in command to Michael Mallin at St. Stephen’s Green. Although condemned to death when the rising was crushed, she had her sentence commuted to penal servitude for life (on account of her sex) and was imprisoned in Aylesbury Jail. Under the general amnesty of 1917, Markievicz was released and immediately became a convert to Catholicism—she claimed to have experienced an epiphany during the rising. In August 1917 she was made a freeman of Sligo. She was made honorary president of the Irish Women Workers’s Union.

In 1918 she was again arrested by the British during their bogus ‘German Plot’, which was aimed at defeating the anti-conscription forces in Ireland. While in prison, she was returned in the general election of December 1918 for St. Patrick’s division of Dublin. Markievicz became the first woman to be elected to the British Parliament, but in accordance with Sinn Féin policy she did not take her seat. She refused to take the oath of allegiance to the King. She was a member of the first Dáil Éireann, which met on the 21 January 1919, and was appointed Minister for Labour. She was arrested in the summer of 1919 for making a seditious speech, and was sentenced to four months’ hard labour. After being arrested again in 1920 she received a sentence of two years’ hard labour.

She denounced the Anglo-Irish treaty of 1921, which established the Irish Free State within the British Commonwealth, in the Dáil after being released from prison early under the general amnesty that followed its signing. She toured America in 1922 to enlist support for the Republican cause. She stated:

‘It is the capitalist interests in England and Ireland that are pushing this Treaty to block the march of the working people in England and Ireland ... Now I say that Ireland’s freedom is worth blood, and worth my blood, and I will willingly give it for it, and I appeal to the men of the Dáil to stand true’.

She was also leader of Cumann na mBan. An opponent of the Irish Free State, she supported the ‘Irregulars’ during the Civil War, for which she was imprisoned. She was released soon after she went on hunger strike in protest. In the general election of 1923 she was elected as Sinn Féin abstentionist TD for Dublin City South. When de Valera formed Fianna Fáil in 1926 Markievicz became a member. During the general election of 1927 she conducted her own campaign and was re-elected to the Dáil. For some years her health was failing, and she died in a public ward in Sir Patrick Dun’s Hospital, Dublin on 15 July 1927. The working-class people of Dublin lined the streets of Dublin for her funeral. Eamonn de Valera was one of the pall-bearers. She is commemorated by a limestone bust in St. Stephen’s Green, by a plaque in St. Ultan’s Hospital and by the Yeats’s poem ‘In memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Constance Markievicz’. She is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery, Co. Dublin.

P.S. Unfortunatedly not all pics form Glasnevin survived their way home cause ther was something wrong with my iriver photo storage and many of them were lost. I thought I'd kill it. Iriver, I mean.

Jackie Kennedy

Jackie timeline. I decided it should be a timeline which's easier ocomprehend and it shows all stuff she did for her family, country and exceptionally art.
1929
Jacqueline Lee Bouvier is born in Southampton, Long Island, on July 28.

1951 Wins Vogue’s Prix de Paris writing contest. Introduced to Congressman John F. Kennedy.

1952 Begins working as the “Inquiring Camera Girl” for the Washington Times Herald.

1953

Jacqueline Bouvier and John F. Kennedy are engaged on June 23, and married in Newport, Rhode Island, on September 12.

1957 Caroline Bouvier Kennedy is born on November 27.

1960 John F. Kennedy defeats Richard M. Nixon in the presidential election. John F. Kennedy, Jr., is born on November 25.

1961
JANUARY 20
John F. Kennedy is inaugurated as the thirty-fifth president if the United States. Jacqueline Kennedy becomes the third-youngest first lady.

FEBRUARY 23
Mrs. Kennedy announces the formation of the twelve-member Fine Arts Committee to develop restoration plans for the White House.

MARCH 29
Lorraine Pearce is appointed the first curator of the White House at the request of Jacqueline Kennedy.

MAY 31
President and Mrs. Kennedy arrive in Paris for a three-day official visit.

JUNE 3
Accompanied by the first lady, President Kennedy meets Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.

JUNE 4
The Kennedys dine with Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip at Buckingham Palace.

SEPTEMBER 21
Congress approves a law making the White House a national monument.

NOVEMBER 13
Following a state dinner for Puerto Rico governor Luis Muñoz Marin, Spanish cellist Pablo Casals performs at the White House.

DECEMBER 15
The Kennedys embark on a series of state visits to Puerto Rico, Venezuela, and Columbia.

1962
FEBRUARY 14
Mrs. Kennedy hosts a televised tour of the White House, for which she later receives a special Emmy award for public service from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

FEBRUARY 20
John H. Glenn Jr. becomes the first American astronaut to orbit the earth.

MARCH 11
Mrs. Kennedy stops in Rome for a private audience with Pope John XXIII en route to India and Pakistan for a semiofficial two-week visit.

APRIL 29
The Kennedys host forty-nine Nobel prizewinners from the Western Hemisphere to a White House dinner held in their honor.

SEPTEMBER 11
Mrs. Kennedy unveils Edward Durrell Stone’s model for the proposed National Cultural Center to be built in Washington, D.C.

SEPTEMBER 28
President Kennedy orders U.S. military to enforce a court order to enroll James Meredith as the first African-American student at the University of Mississippi.

OCTOBER 16—28
Cuban Missile Crisis

NOVEMBER 30
Jacqueline Kennedy’s Asian Journey is released to movie theatres worldwide.

DECEMBER 29
President and Mrs. Kennedy address Brigade 2506, which participated in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, at the Orange Bowl in Miami.

1963
JANUARY 8
The Mona Lisa is exhibited at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

JUNE 11
President Kennedy mobilizes the National Guard to enforce admission of black students to the University of Alabama.

JUNE 24
President Kennedy visits the Berlin Wall and receives a hero’s welcome when he addresses a huge crowd afterward: “Ich bin ein Berliner.”

AUGUST 7
Patrick Bouvier Kennedy is born prematurely, and dies two days later.

AUGUST 28
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., delivers his “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial, and meets with President Kennedy in the Oval Office.

AUGUST 30
The “hot line” between the Kremlin and the White House is established.

OCTOBER 10
President Kennedy signs the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

NOVEMBER 22
President Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas.

NOVEMBER 25
John F. Kennedy is buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Jacqueline Kennedy lights the eternal flame.

1964 Jacqueline Kennedy and her children move to New York City.

1968 Jacqueline Kennedy marries Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis on the island of Skorpios.

1975
JANUARY
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis becomes involved in the fight to save New York City’s Grand Central Station from demolition.

MARCH 15
Aristotle Onassis dies in Paris.

1976 Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis begins her career as a literary editor.

1979
The John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, designed by I. M. Pei, is dedicated on October 20 in Boston.

1994
Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis dies in New York City on May 19, and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery four days later.
Bernadette Mary Flynn

Forgive me!! Please!!!! I know it's pop and stuff, but please!!!! Nobody can deny she dances in a magnificent way!
Bernadette Mary Flynn was born on August 1, 1979 in Nenagh - Tipperary - Ireland. Her parents Andy and Mary Flynn own a pub which is also a bed & breakfast in her home town Nenagh.

The pub is called : "Andy Flynn's" and the walls are covered with pictures of Bernadette dancing in Lord of the Dance. Bernadette's family has always been very supportive of her dancing.

Bernadette went to school at " St. Mary secondary school" in Ireland. While her classmates were busy preparing for the exams in their last year before graduation, Bernadette enjoyed the succes of a dream come true : dancing as one of the leading ladies in Lord of the Dance next to Michael Flatley. She has no regrets about leaving her school behind. Bernadette says : "This is what i've always wanted to do, it's a dream come true for any Irish dancer".

Before Lord of the Dance, she attended " Browne Academy of Dance" starting at the age of 4. Bernadette's Irish dancing teacher was Dorian Brown.
Her sister Elaine used to tutor her in Irish dance in th early years. They'd do classes during the week and on weekends bernadette was competing at several dance competitions.
Among her competitive achievements, she had won 6 World titles and 7 All-Irelands. She came in first in the 1996 World Irish dancing championship.
When Bernadette auditioned for LOTD, she was chosen to dance one of the leads : Saoirse, the Irish colleen. Saoirse means freedom.

Bernadette is dancing the part of Saoirse on the Lord of the Dance and Feet of Flames. She can also be seen in 2 Olive Hurley Dance instructions video's called : " Irish dancing Step by Step" and "the 25th Anniversary World Championship".(funny to see her young)
Bernadette is dancing with the show from the very beginning, but some of the highlights in her career are dancing in front of one billion viewers during the Academy Awards ( Oscars ) in Los Angeles and she danced for the president of Ireland when she visited Bernadette's hometown Nenagh.