 Thank you for doing this. Well, one of the issues is that these are women who were invisible, especially Cibilla Miriam. She was the one who discovered the mysteries of metamorphosis. But what got me started is that Cobb and I were watching Nova, and it was on butterflies. And I said, oh, they've got to talk about her. She's got to be part and parcel. I'm sure they're going to say, Maria Cibilla Miriam did all the way to the end of this hour-long Nova show. They were talking about the butterflies and how they didn't understand the mysteries. And aren't they beautiful? No mention of her name. And I was like, how could they do that? But when she's historically, she is the foundation of the whole study of lepidoptera. So in addition to having already read the book, it's part and parcel of a book Cobb and I did on resilience. And it's the story of African-American women scientists. We have a chapter on the history of women scientists. And it turns out that most of those women made their entry in the field through botanical illustration and naturalism that they learned in their gardens. So as soon as I told friends that this is what I was doing, I got showered with all of these books that I absolutely had to read and discovered Mary Delaney and a young woman by the name of Jean Barre, who you won't hear in the history books. And I thought somebody needs to tell their story. So if you have any comments or added information, feel free to stop me at any time. But I want to set the scene, the context, for what these women did. No electricity. They were working by candlelight or lantern or oil lamps. No central heat. No air conditioning in the summer. Corsets, petticoats, stomachers, platens. I mean, they were literally encased in their clothes. No plumbing, no showers, wool, heavy linen, course fabrics, and wigs, of course, that came along with the lice. What year are you talking about? 1600s. I'm starting in the 1600s. Maria Sibyla-Marian was born actually in 1740s. You know what, I'm missing a page of my notes. Anyway, she was born in the 1600s. And she was the daughter of a print publisher. And so she was around printing presses, copper plate etchings. And she was a curious child. And she always loved butterflies. So she had a collection of these butterflies and the chrysalis. And everyone thought it was wonderful. At the time, it was thought dangerous for a woman or a young girl to be curious. But she was encouraged because they figured eventually she'll get married, eventually she'll have a household and she'll grow out of this, which she absolutely never did. She ended up being married to the apprentice of a friend of her father's. He was an artist. And when her father died, of course, all of the money the business went to the male members of the family because women were not allowed to own property or work. Their job was to maintain the household, make sure everybody got fed. Everything was clean. And the only thing that they had was their garden. And so she would spend her time in her garden actually watching the butterflies lay their eggs, the larvae develop, the caterpillar, what they ate, and then this chrysalis from which the butterfly would emerge. So she had amazing drawings and an amazing collection. But she wanted to know how did this happen? What was going on? So in the process of documenting this whole series, she also dispelled the myth of spontaneous generation. She said, no, insects don't just all of a sudden grow out of garbage or wherever you find them. There's a process for it. So she was instrumental in that. Her husband was not necessarily interested in following her work or even allowing her to do it. She had two daughters. And she was also taking care of her mother. And when she realized that she needed to really expand her area of research and discovery, she joined the Labidus, which is a religious, it was considered a religious cult. And one of the things you had to do was you gave up all of your worldly goods and you moved into this compound. It was actually a very beautiful compound where she and her mother and her daughters lived because her husband had gone off to paint portraits. So when he came back, this was in Germany. And then she moved to France. But she finally ended up in Holland. So when he came back from painting and gambling around with his friends, he found his wife and children and his mother-in-law gone into this cult. So he went to where they were and refused to give up his worldly possessions. And he hung around for six or seven months and finally decided it was useless. And he went off to, I think it was Germany, found another wife, divorced her, and got remarried. And as soon as she found out her divorce was final, she left the cult. And she went to Amsterdam. And she was like, OK, somehow I have to find a way to support myself. So she did still lifes. She painted the flowers in people's gardens. Because at this time, everyone was collecting these exotic plants and flora from all over the world. And not all of them did well. So artists and illustrators who could actually paint and draw these before they died were in demand. So she managed to find a way to stay with friends, make this money doing her prints. And she realized that everyone had these curiosity cabinets. So as explorers would come back, they would bring bones and they would bring mounted butterflies and even the chrysalis and plants. And she looked, because of her experience, realized that all of these were disconnected. But she knew that there was a connection. And so she managed to hire herself out as an agent to collect curiosities for these people's cabinets. And she got on a ship to Suriname with her daughter, her other daughter, oldest daughter, had married. And they settled. No, her mother stayed in Holland. It was just her daughter and herself in Suriname. And so there she was in her heavy woven clothes and her corsets. And it's 110 degrees in humid. But she persevered. And she would not only go out and collect butterflies, but she painted, she did illustrations of crocodiles, of snakes, of actually any animal that she could find that was either dead or could hold still long enough for her to draw. But she focused on the collection of moths, butterflies, the chrysalis, and watching these insects develop. At one stage in their home, the ants, you know how ants, what do they call it when ants and bees come out of the hive and there's a swarm? Swarm. These ants swarmed out of the jungle, into her house, up her walls, ate her entire collection. That's how many that were. She came down with fevers. And when it got to be too difficult for her to stay, she took the collection that she had and all of these curiosities that she had collected and went back to Amsterdam and began to draw this collection in detail. Towards the end of her life, she had a stroke, but there are like six volumes of these drawings and books and detailed work that entomologists still look at and use today. So I'm going to show you. They're in Amsterdam right now, and I think there might be some in Germany. Oh, I've got an iPad, so you touch the screen and it does. Oh, great. It's not responding. This is not an iPad. This is not responding. And I was like, why isn't it? This is Cobbis. Say her name again. Say her name again. Maria Sibilla Miriam. Yeah. So did you ever contact Nova and say what? I wanted to write them a letter and say, how dare you be this woman? See on the screen? Yeah. This is a portrait of her at the later end of her life. But these were, can you see those? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yes. Oh, wow. OK. We shouldn't have to go to full screen, Pinta. You're not quite it. Well, this doesn't open the door. The top-hand corner of the green there. Up in the left there. Oh, this? Yeah. The automobile world or the other green circle. This. Yeah. Oh, look at that. Thank you so much. So these were the kinds of watercolors that she did for her friends to make money. So she was really very accomplished. And she created these worlds of where you'd have butterflies and moss and caterpillars and the plant life. But the ones to me that are the most fascinating are all of these different. Imagine now you're in a place where the sweat is running down your face. You've got limited supplies. Your paper is probably curling. And she is recording what she has seen in a way that allowed people to actually understand that there are all these different species. The mindset, I think it might be kind of like you going to Alaska where you have no idea what you're going to encounter. It's all new, things that you haven't seen. So this was really very, very exciting. So these are all her drawings. Yeah. And I want to, this is one of my favorites. I don't think I can get this to be any bigger. No. And I lost it. And Kaba said to me, dear, you want to bookmark this. And I was like, no, I don't need to bookmark it. It'll all be fine. Yeah, I think it's beautiful. But even the seeds and the pomegranate. Yeah, look at that. And the colors. And remember, color was also an issue because you had, what are they called? Goose turd green, rat hair brown. The colors reds and blues were made for people who could afford those dyes. So to go out into your garden and see this rush of colors that you couldn't even dress yourself in, but that candy for the eye. Did she have to buy the pigments and make the water color herself? Probably. But because she grew up in a family of publishers that she was around art all the time and they had to make the plates for the books, she already knew how to take care of and do all that. But we take a lot for granted. So Bintar, are these engravings that are then painted? Some of them are, and some, yes. Some of them are, and some of them are. Like copper engravings? Yes. So have you seen an original? No, unfortunately. And I'm really surprised the botanical gardens doesn't have any of her work. But they have work from the 1200s of the male botanical illustrators, and they have the originals in these huge portfolios. I forget the name of the botanist for Napoleon, and who was it that said, let the meat take? Marie Antoinette. Marie Antoinette. There's a very famous botanist botanical illustrator who did all the work for her gardens, and they have the original portfolios for that. And it's not only amazing to look at it, but it's also intimidating because what they had to do with the materials they worked with is really difficult to do with what we have today in modern times. So if you go to the internet, you'll see all of these works. It's really very, very amazing. And the book itself is called Chrysalis. And the book itself has some of the plates in it towards the back so that you can get a better look at the kind of work she was doing. Actually, these almost look like photographs. They're so detailed. And to scale, everything is just. And so is she writing that down the genus and species of each? Well, this was the thing. All of that didn't come until later. So I think what she was basically doing was using whatever classification schedule they had at that time. And then when Linnaeus came out with his classification, that was when they really raised the alarm about women being botanist because he used human sexuality to talk about the reproduction of plants. And they thought that women were far too fragile to actually hear that language or know. And I thought to myself, that's interesting theory. You can have babies. You can have babies, but there's one piece that I just absolutely have to read. Is it here? Here. Here. For example, this is in 1873. Clark, a professor at Harvard Medical School. Now, please note it's Harvard because we'll go back to that. Argued that college level education was dangerous to women's physiology. In sex in education, he described the uterus as a delicate organ with a voracious thirst for blood. He claimed that college women thought too much and that their highly charged brains drew too much blood out of their systems, causing their sexual organs to shrivel away. As Clark explained it, education was a sterilizing influence for women. In fact, strenuous thinking could cause women to substitute masculine lininess for distinctive feminine traits and to risk becoming sterile, unwomanly creatures analogous to the sexist class of termites. This was in 1873. So we come to, what is it, 2000? And we have some are saying that women are genetically indisposed to actually learning science and math. So it's like there's a meme, a historical meme, and that's like a memory gene that is passed down just the same way that genes are through families or through systems until the meme is the same, but maybe the way it's described or activated is a little different. So you have the glass ceiling, you have disparity in wages, but this has been a historic piece that has come down to women through the years. And given that this is International Women's Month, I think it's something that we should really think about. Someone has already said adding numbers of women to the field is not going to change things. It's changing the way people think about women and what they're capable of doing or producing in society. We're losing 50% of our intellectual capacity. But like I said, this is something that's come down from a long, long distance. I'm going to leave these up. And I'm going to go to the next woman is Jean Barre. And there is a picture of her on the front of this book, but you will not find her on the internet or in history. Filibert Comerson was an up and coming botanist in France. And his father wanted him to become a doctor. This is around the 1700s. He didn't want to be a doctor. He wanted to pursue botany, which was considered a silly field and something that women did and dominated. He had a woman working for him. She was a peasant woman. And she taught him how to collect and preserve plants. And while she was working for him, she became his mistress. And so he learned the basics of botany from her and from her experience. Now, as his mistress, she got pregnant at least three times. And each time she took the child and put it on the steps of the church because he was from a wealthy family and she was a peasant, he could not claim the children or give her any money for them. And she certainly couldn't survive as a single woman with children. And it just totally would have changed her life. But what happened is that Comerson got an opportunity to travel on a ship that was looking at the different French colonies and land that they had repossessed. And he said, yes, I'll go because the botanical gardens wanted him to collect these exotic plants from these places, things that they had never seen before. But he didn't want to go without Jean. And she certainly didn't want to stay behind because what was she going to do? There was a royal edict out that women were not allowed to travel on ships. And so Jean cut her hair, bound her breasts, dressed as a man, and went as his assistant. Boganville was the captain of this ship at the time. And he agreed to give Comerson a generous cabin and allow his assistant, this young man, to stay in the cabin with him. Because she knew if she slept with the crew, she would be found out. Well, there was a doctor on the ship who suspected that something wasn't right. He didn't like Comerson. He didn't like Jean because they had better accommodations than he had. And so after going around through the Antarctic up these hills, she carried all of the equipment. She pressed and organized the plants. He was out just collecting things like crazy. But she was the one who put his collection together. They got to Tahiti. And the Tahitians recognized her as a woman because it was part and parcel of their society to have women dressed as men and men dressed as women. It was no big deal to them. And the doctor found out from some of these natives. And he staged her gang raid by the crew. So by the time she got back to the ship, the captain was so enraged and upset. But what could he say? Because she was traveling illegally. And so she had to heal her own wounds. And they continued to travel until they got to Mauritius. And at Mauritius, he, Comerson, wanted to stay longer to collect. And so he stayed with friends in a very fancy house, the big house. And she was relegated to a small home with absolutely no connection to him. But she still helped him collect all of this information. He got sick and died. She was stranded on Mauritius for seven years because she could not get back to France. She worked as a barmaid. And a sailor came in. They fell in love, got married. And she was able to travel back to France as his wife. She sued the government for her pension and Boganville, who felt so guilty about all of this having happened to her, advocated for it. She was able to live on her pension and die. She never saw the collection. The lucky thing is that most of the collection stayed in Mauritius during the French Revolution. So it wasn't destroyed when they went through and burned down and cut everything apart that was part of the elite society. So his whole collection right now is in the botanical garden in the museum. But her name is not attached to it. And she died quietly in the village in which she was born. So I have nothing from that except the picture of her on this book. But if you read the book, the idea, again, we have this issue of no electricity, no air conditioning. It's not an ocean liner. It's a ship being tossed on the waves. And she was the first woman to circumnavigate the world that way. But she gets no credit except for tonight. She gets lots and lots of credit. So the next person that I want to show you actually is Mary Delaney. And Mary Delaney has another fabulous story. Do you want the lights down, folks? Or do you want me to? I think it's OK. OK, so this is Mary Delaney. And her book, and you can look through and see some of the, I think they have plates of her work. Yeah, she was being groomed to be the lady in waiting in the queen's court. And at the time, there was a lot of upheaval in the court. And so it didn't happen. And her family, unfortunately, they were counting on that as a way for her to bring in money as the eldest child. Well, they found that there was this gout-ridden older lord who was looking for a wife who was old enough to be her grandfather. But they knew if they married her off to him, which is, again, this is women as furniture, that he would pay their debt. And she could take care of his house. She went to his house. It was a mess. There were animals in and out. She cleaned that up. He was also in the, I believe, in the court. I don't think they had the House of Thomas in the other house. But he was very politically connected. But when he got sick with gout and she had to take care of them, they moved to London. And that allowed her to at least see some of her friends. She loved the garden. She loved painting the pictures. She loved being in the court. She designed her own clothes. And when he got so sick with the gout that she had to nurse him and take care of him, he said to her, you've been so wonderful. I'm going to write you into my will. And he had one last sexual moment with her dead. And the next morning, she woke up. He was dead, hadn't changed the will. She had no money, no home. His inheritance went to her cousin because it went to the male. And her cousin wasn't crazy about her, so he didn't want to give her an allowance. And she stayed with friends and eventually met a minister by the name of Delaney, who she shared a joy of traveling and walking through the woods. They were married for several years. She was very happy. And then he died and she became a widow again. But she found as a widow, she had more freedom because unmarried women weren't allowed to do certain things. Meanwhile, if you were a widow, you could go any place you wanted. So at 70, when her husband died, a Dowager Countess took her in. And this woman had insomnia, so she didn't sleep at night. And Mary Delaney moved into her palatial home. And according to the story, she was in maybe a music room with lots of windows. And she saw a piece of paper that was the exact color of some of the geraniums that she had. And she took that piece of paper and cut a petal shape out of it. And then she took another piece of paper and cut a petal shape out of it. And she created from 70 to 90 over 1,000 paper collage flowers. And that's what you're seeing up here. So for instance, yes, these are paper. If you look at this, look at the fine lines and detail. Her tools were a very sharp pointed pair of scissors and a scalpel. And some papers she would have died. Some she died herself. But her drawings are so accurate in terms of the flowers that botanists would come to actually study them. Because there she was, again, the woman in the garden who knew more about the details of the flowers than the people who collected them. So that's a collage? This is all paper. Let's see if I can get on. These are all her original works. And they are in the, what is it, Museum of Natural History? British Museum of Natural History. And so if you have special permission, you can actually go through the portfolios. But let's see if I can get better. Here's what. But she not only matched the structure of the plant. Using dyes and colored paper, she matched the colors. So they're not artificial. They look exactly like what you would find in the garden. Yeah, so it's pretty amazing. Look at the detail of the reproductive parts. And this is what botanists would come to her home to study. Because, OK, I'm going to set the stage again. Here she is in a drafty castle at 70. Now, you know our eyes go bad. Our hands aren't quite as steady. It's hard to stay on your feet and bending over at 70. Over 1,000 of these she did before she died. So when you think about the way she was moved from one place to another, at one point she was courted by Lord Baltimore, the man who eventually owned all of Maryland. And she called him peripatetic. Friends set her up with him. And they were out in the garden. And he decided that that would be a good time to seduce her. And she looked at him like he was out of her mind. She was angry with her friend. And she stormed away. And he chased her. And she was not interested in going to the New World. She was friends with Handel. So this is the world that she operated in. But still, she was dependent on someone else for her well-being. But to actually take these flowers apart and put them back together with tissue paper. And she always used a black ground so that you could actually see the flowers. So these are women that we can look to today as inspiration. They would fit very well in the Me Too generation because of what they went through just as women. But they're also inspirations because if I complain that my eyes hurt because I'm looking through the microscope too long, I just think of these women and I'm like, no, you've got it good. You've got a microscope. So these are the kinds of things that, for me, it's important to pass on to whoever will listen because these are the beginnings of changes that took place in society. And there were many women out there, mathematicians, scientists, astronomers, chemists who actually laid the foundation for these fields and you don't really hear their names because whatever man they were helping, that was the person who got the recognition. Any questions? So you can go on the internet and look at all of these. So these are in the British Museum? Yes, they are. I wonder how big they are, probably small. You know. Probably maybe they're life-sized. I think they are, actually. That would make sense. That they're actually life-sized because she was really keen on accuracy. So it's a black ground. Is it a black paper, do you know? Sometimes it was painted. And I don't know what kind of glue sheet. There was no Elmer's glue, no hot glue guns. And think of the skill you would need to move those tiny pieces of paper into proper position. So I'm wondering, when I look at that right there and I'm looking at the center of the flower and there's a shadow on the right-hand side, if the shadow is painted or is that a different color piece of paper? Oh, no, there were different colored pieces of paper. All of it is paper. And so if there was a shadow or one plant shadowing another, then it was a darker shade of that to present that. But it's all these tiny pieces of paper. Yeah, she's amazing. Look at this. And they've held up over. Yes, and they've held up over all of those years from. Well, that's interesting, too. Yeah, she died in 1807. How were they preserved? You know, I'm not sure that, I don't think, was covered in the book. But the story of Mary Delaney is based on volumes of letters that she would write to her sister and her sister would respond. And one of her relatives, her decided that her story needed to be told, and so she released those letters to the author. So everything that's in the book is based on actual experience, her actual experience. But I'm just, I was absolutely blown away by the images and by her story. And when did she live, the 1700s? 18, she was born in 1740 and died in 1807. So she, Queen Anne, and I think it was King George, also bought some of her work, but they didn't necessarily sponsor. But they encouraged her in her efforts. So she was at the higher end of society. Maria Sebelomirian was kind of in the middle, and Jean Barre was at the bottom, basically. So were these used for teaching purposes? Which? No, she did them because she absolutely loved the process. She found it challenging. She found it exciting. But no, this was just her own passion. It was the same with Sebelomirian. It was her passion. And it was her passion that convinced Jean Barre to dress herself up as a man and go on this voyage. So it wasn't necessarily about promoting themselves, but it was about this was a love they had. And if you think of the garden was where women spent their time, one botanist claimed that no, women shouldn't be botanists, but their sons should sit at their knee and learn everything that they know about the dark. So that they have a strong foundation. So that's where it started. Didn't her Delaney express herself artistically in any other way before she was in her 70s? She's just unbelievable. No, she picked up. She designed her own clothes, so she was used to cutting cloth and sewing, et cetera. And it was picking up this piece of paper that matched the petal of a plant she had in front of her that got her started. So she was an artist. She, unlike the others, wasn't a scientist or a botanist, really, right? She didn't go on to describe or classify or anything. Her description is in the form of her images. And her description is so accurate. Again, botanists would come and actually study her drawings to understand the plants better. So she discovered her artistry late in life. But she always loved the gardens and collecting. And she would design gardens for people. So she would design gardens, tell people where to plant things, what kind of flowers, et cetera. She was a landscape architect. Yeah, right, there you go. Early on. Early on, exactly. Amazing. Yeah, and I'm sure there are hundreds of women like this. But the exciting thing was just reading their books. It was like reading adventure stories. And she must have paid very close attention to keeping her drawings safe and protected. Yeah, exactly. She felt the work of them. Yeah, I'm sure that there are ways to have the drawings sewn together and put into books. But I think her work is particularly difficult because it's collage on paper. It's not like an etching like Miriam's work or a watercolor where it has a little more permanence. It is, if you've ever done collage, it can be a very frustrating thing because if you lay a piece of paper on the wrong place, it's not going to come up easily. You have to cover it over. But no, she was just very, very particular about her work. It's what gave her like this. It's what gave her a purpose. And it's probably why she lived until she was 90. Because they say, as long as you have a plan, as long as you have a purpose, you'll continue to get up out of your bed and put one foot in front of the other. Oh, thank goodness. Yeah. Yeah, I got to find one. Well, I was complaining to a friend about getting old. And she said, well, she said, I just read something that said getting old is a privilege. And she said, imagine what you've seen and what you've experienced, and you still have that space to learn and continue on. I think it's the whole idea of being a lifelong learner, long before Dewey or any of those people claimed it. Just the idea that there's something that we don't know. And the more you know, the more you realize you don't know anything. And for Mary Delaney especially, she, as a woman, she had the freedom to do it once she got older. Yeah, and right, exactly. And she had that support by the Dowager Countess, exactly. But I still think of the conditions under which she worked. But the story about Maria Syllabus Marion, the aunt swarming through her apartment, eating her entire whole lunch. Everything that wasn't nailed down, that was edible. So here you are in Suriname, and the, you know, eggs. And she talked about hearing the insects. So it wasn't just the Lepidoptera, but any insect that spiders, she did spiders. She did wonderful drawings of spiders as well. And hummingbirds, just so that people could see what was out there. This is up the subject of these three women. But are you familiar with Mary Holland, the naturalist? Naturalist, down in Hartland, Vermont. And she sends out, you can subscribe to her email, then she sends it out four or five times a week. Well, a couple of days ago, she sent out one. And I'm going to find it on my phone, which is why I'm going to get my phone out and play with it. Because it was all paper cuttings. It was all white paper on this guy. Did you see it? The guy who constructed things like birds of paradise and bears. And I'm going to find it. Maybe we can call it up on the screen. The artist that was down in Putney that had the exhibit at the governor's office. It was all paper cuts. She was amazing in the detail. I can't remember her name. We tried to get her to teach in class, but she was pregnant. Yeah, and I saw his work online, too, separately. But I don't remember. I think those of us who focus on this kind of work are kind of obsessional. I don't want to say OCB, but I think that comes to mind. That's barely all I said. And you start working, or I start working. And as I'm going, I can't stop. And all of a sudden, I'm in this whole small, tiny little world. And I look up, and it's 2 o'clock in the morning. I'm like, oh, it's dark outside. I haven't eaten anything. I haven't eaten anything. And I think that that's one of the things that moved these women forward. I read a novel, and I, of course, don't remember the name of it or the author. But it was the work of fiction, but that's what it was about. It was about a woman botanist, I think, maybe in the 1700s. And her story was very similar in a lot of ways. So whoever the author was must have done research. Well, we look at pride and prejudice, but we don't think about the implications of that. Particularly, it's like, oh, isn't it romantic? It's like, no. It's not. It's kind of barbaric. And this goes across societies. It's not just European society. In Rome, Hepatica, I think that was her name. She was a mathematician and a scientist at a time when the Roman Empire was switching possibly to Christianity instead of paganism. And she worked at the university in Alexandria. And she had freedom to move from one place to the next. And she was highly sought after, but she was a botanist. And so the Christians who wanted the emperor to change to Christianity felt that anybody who believed in Plato and didn't believe in God and was close to the emperor needed to be dealt with. So they not only killed her, but they totally dismembered her body and spread it to the four corners because they felt that her influence was but there was no thought about all of the mathematical formulas and questions that she had answered during time. So it's not even a recent phenomenon. We can go back way back. So there are a lot of books that talk and cover that. There is one who said, is it Elaine Pagels? No, Karen Armstrong wrote a book called The History of God. And she starts out by talking about women who were priestesses and how because the men were off doing whatever it was that they did having war and roaming around and getting game, women were at home taking care of all of the other issues. So here you are at a time where there's no physics, no chemistry, nothing to explain the moon, the stars, lightning, thunder, and these women formed religious sex. And as priestesses, they became very powerful. Well, when they went from being hunter-gatherers to an agrarian society, the men looked at these women with all their power and they're like, oh, wait a minute. We want that. So we have to figure out a way to make them small. And of course, they were awed by the fact that these women could give birth to another human being. So in the process, they made the menstrual cycle something unclean. And they eventually undermined that whole set of priestesses and took that over themselves. And then the demise just followed from there. So my hats off to all of the women in the world during International Women's Month, that we got this far. We're still alive and working very hard. So any other? I have lots of stories, but any? Well, I just keep thinking about these are beautiful books that I've never seen before. I'm right. And just about how many people are reading them or just also talking about other ways of communicating their stories. How are these books and the research that these women did about these women, an inspiration for more years and years of work. The woman who wrote the book about Jean, Bray had to go back in the records and look at logs from the ship and correspondence that cumbersome had to put the story together. So that in itself is years and years of research. So these are all European women. And I just also think about the early scientists with the Moors and that influence on Spain and that whole area. Right, exactly. Do you know of you read it by every now? Oh, my platter is so full. I will. Because that was my, the original search was to find out when African-American women came into the field of science. And it wasn't until close to the end of slavery where they began to, especially if they got to the north, they became doctors and lawyers and scientists. The sad thing is that during the suffrage movement, because the women in the suffrage movement were so angry that a black male would get the chance to vote before they did, that they stopped being abolitionists, but they also left those black women out of the movement. So they're again in double shadowed, but those stories are slowly coming out. So you just pick a branch and decide, this is a topic I wanna know something about and there's a book or information somewhere for you to do it. Don't get it off of Wikipedia, although these slides are. But even the story that they tell on Wikipedia about these women doesn't tell the full story. So these are your drawings and they're from some other reason, right? These are, yes, these are my drawings. I have to tell you there are three of those that there's a wild parsnip and gout weed. And that was the portfolio that I submitted to the Botanical Gardens for my certificate. And what they basically said to me was no. And the reason is too much negative space, they expected something in this format. Small. Small, they expected something small, but one of the pieces in their requirements was the plant has to be life-sized. So then they said that my magnifications were not in scale to the drawings and there was too much repetition. And I reminded them, well, I did these three plans because the director suggested that I do these three plans. And then I thought, okay, bite your tongue because they've got the certificate and you don't. Yeah, but they gave you real feedback. They gave me real feedback. They said there was nothing wrong with the drawings, the quality of the drawings, they were wonderful. But when I submitted my proposal in October with my thumbnail sketches, these were not the thumbnail sketches that I submitted. So I broke the rules. So what is the certificate? It's a certificate of botanical illustration and it's 230 credits worth of courses. Oh. And most of the classes are three to four credits. And I had to take the intensives that were a week long because I couldn't do the every day for three months classes. So it took me quite a while. So I'm working on my second submission. And it's Plantain, St. John's Ward, and what's it? Heelsall. What was the last one? Heelsall, it's called, there's another name for it, but I don't have the botanical names or things. So it's like. Another challenge ahead. Another challenge ahead, but I'm not going to stop. And these are mine as well, yeah. So I really like graphite on paper. I really like the black and white. I like the detail. I find that I can do color, but the color sometimes hides the real detail of the plant. And if I have a choice, it's going to be pencil and paper. Eventually, we're going to go back to West Africa. And I'm going to use this as a way to teach science to in the high school level. So watercolor would be fine. Watercolor pencils would be fine. But the most easily movable would be paper and pencil. And everybody's got that. And it would be inexpensive. So I want to really hone my skills in that area so that when we finally do go back, I can be accurate in terms of what I'm teaching. So yes, these are mine. And as I was explaining, as you're doing the plant, it's slowly wilting. So this one in particular, the astromaria, is kind of like Frankenstein's daughter. Because we had all of these plants in the room. And so you would very quickly do the leaves. Then you'd do a study of the stems. And then you would do the flower. And the classic rule is you'd have to have frontal view, a side view, and then a back view. So if you look at any botanical illustration or even a fabric, you'll find that that's the formula. So the flowers were all done at different times. Because they don't always bloom the way you want them to. And the instructor, you had to do a whole sheet of the whole environment of the plant. But it was bits and pieces. And the instructor would look at it and say, OK, now put together your drawing. And I put that together three times. Vertical, she didn't like it. I had it horizontal. But there was one blossom that she thought was too big. She didn't like my bud. So I finally got to that piece. And one of my criticisms was that my leaves were too artistic. They were too artistic. And I was like, oh. Excellent work. Yeah, exactly. So they're very, very specific. And they come around with a magnifying glass and a ruler. Because one of the things that you have to make sure is when you're doing your shading, that the paper is saturated. They don't want to see any paper. And so they measure your plant. They measure your drawing. They look at the saturation. And then they're like, OK, this one. See, that's one advantage that these women had. They did their thing. And nobody was looking at it. I know. Isn't that something? And they did it so well. So I will carry on. I'm not one to just give up the fight. Excellent. Thank you. Describe how you had to do the colored one and shaking the dirt out. Oh, yeah. Well, this is color pencil and a watercolor pencil. So you do the color pencil first and use the watercolor pencil to give it depth. So the plant was in a pot. And they tell you, get rid of all the pieces of the plant that are not stylistic. They don't make a good map. So you cut away the blossoms. You cut away the leaves. And when you get to the part where you have to do the roots, you take the plant out of the pot and you run it under the sink, shake the roots out, cut the way the roots that you're not going to do, and then mount it with, they call them helping hands. They're the clamp. It's a clamp on a system that people who do soldering use. And so you've got this thing clamped up. You've got it propped up with dental floss. You've got stuff tied all over the place that doesn't show up. And then you try and do it before the plant dies. This was a one week long process, five, six hours a day. And that was all we were expected to come up with, was that one piece. But I have a great admiration for plants and their mobility, because boy can they move. Yeah, exactly. Yes, honestly, honestly. So that's my challenge. But it's so wonderful being able to go out my door and not worry about subject matter. How because it's winter? Well, now I can't. But in the spring, I don't have to worry about subject matter because everything else is right there. Yes, exactly. How quickly do they move? When you're growing them, for example. Well, by the end of two hours, the stems have probably started to, or a blossom will open or a bud will pop up. And you're like, oh, well, here's something. And the leaves start to curl. So they also move to track the light, too. Yeah. So you have the light shining from one side. And there are windows, but you try not to sit by the windows. It's a lovely, lovely process. There was one Bobby Angel, who is in southern Vermont. She came to one of our sessions, and she gave a talk about her work. And she talked about going out to Colorado with these botanists to draw these plants of this particular ecological area. And then coming back, and she said, I'm hunched back from looking in a microscope all the time and bending over and making sure it's correct. And it's what the botanist wants in the book. She said, and so there are 12 volumes. And of those volumes, maybe six of the drawings I did appeared. So she showed us, she said, I needed to do something else. And so she started doing copper plate etchings and just some really beautiful work where she said I could be a little more artistic and not necessarily so stuck by the rules. But she said, I'm bound and determined to use the skills that I've gained to be able to express myself, but she does some amazing work, too. So how long have you been doing botanical? It's been, what, seven years now? It's been wonderful having Kava as my husband. He's a scientist, technician, agriculturalist. So we would go for walks and he'd say, don't touch it. It might be poison. OK, of course not. Yeah, and he was absolutely right. He said, take a picture of it and then look it up. Why is it wise? Yeah, very, very wise, so I think in ways he's kept me alive. But thank you all for coming. Thank you. It was small, but it was fun. And I hope you'll just pass the word around to as many different places as you possibly can. Absolutely. Have you seen the box? That there is just amazing. The world is a wonderful place.