Quotes from Kim Todd

I write the truth because I love it and because there is no living creature whose anger I fear or whose praise I court." ~ Nellie Bly, The Evening World, 1895

Ultimately, the intoxication of exploration seemed to draw her further from god rather than closer.

If there was a beehive to be poked with a stick, McDonald wasn't going to stand around eating store-bought honey.

But like the formation of the American Medical Association with its explicit goal of discrediting midwives; and the institutionalization of the natural sciences, which labeled many women 'amateur naturalists,' while men grabbed government and university jobs as botanists, entomologists, and astronomers; the change erected financial and cultural barriers for all women and racial barriers for those who weren't white.

But merian, so often able to slide by the rules somehow, held on to her specialised tools: her book of notes, her paints, her expensive vellum--carta non nata, skin from unborn lambs, that held the color like nothing else. She brought her mixing materials and pigments.

Often they were arranged according to the whim of the owner, as scientific classification was still in flux, new systems evolving all the time. Categorising a universe that shifted every time a new ship blew into port proved both necessary and a challenge....some classified shells as "knobbed" versus "wrinkled," "the right lip broad" versus,"parallel lips," or listed insects as "naked wings," "sheathed wings" or "creeping.

She deliberately cultivated relationships with natural philosophers, publishers, and patrons as well as artists....,contacts who would help her build her business.

Collectors wanted pictures of the items they'd gathered, both to form Catalina of the whole and to record individual favorites.

Artists who painted natural curiosities found themselves documenting a world emerging and disappearing at the same time, a brief encounter as species heading for extinction and humans crossed paths.

It wasn't until 1975 that the Supreme Court ruled states couldn't create laws that discouraged women from participation on juries and 1994 when peremptory challenges based solely on sex were outlawed.

I never loved anyone so much that I thought it would last. In fact, I never felt I could give up my life of freedom to become a man's housekeeper. (Susan B. Anthony being interviewed by Nellie Bly)