Tagged: Melissa Currence

Being Feisty Pays Off

Pictured: Janet Buening, Denisha Porter, Melissa Currence

In December 2022, I was honored to be named a Fiesty Woman by the Woman’s City Club of Greater Cincinnati along with my fellow honorees, Janet Buening and Denisha Porter. 

It was an amazing day and such an honor to be introduced by Cathy Bailey, my friend from Leadership Ohio, and to be nominated by Susan Noonan, who I’ve worked closely with through the Cincinnatus Association. They are both feisty women I admire. 

My biggest thank you is to the Woman’s City Club of Greater Cincinnati for this award. 

With this honor, I was reminded of my 2017 visit to Cincinnati History Library and Archives while researching the women’s suffrage centennial for our region (See more in Let Ohio Women Vote, an Emmy award-winning documentary from Think TV/CET). The librarian brought the two old versions of the city’s registered voter rosters–one from 1919 and one from 1920. The 1919 version had a women’s roll and a men’s roll for each city ward because women since 1894 could vote for school board candidates in the state of Ohio. The thinking at the time was women should be able to weigh in on the direction of their children’s education. There were a few pages of women for each ward. 

Then there was the 1920 one. 

It was double the size.  All there was listed were voters—men and many feisty women who were now allowed to vote on all the issues of their day.

I think about how many women were members of the Woman’s City Club, which was founded in 1915, and how many of them now felt empowered because they had a place in this organization to create a political life. I’m grateful the Woman City Club was a home for suffragists during their fight for the right to vote.

Those voter roll books are a great symbol of the power of the enfranchisement, but they also show the fight for voting rights is never done. As we know, many then were left out of voting system in 1920 and work had to continue into the 1950s and ’60s to keep expanding the electorate. And the fight for voting rights continues today. 

Today, I’m so thankful for civic organizations like Woman’s City Club that give those who are the feisty ones —a home to continue this work of educating, empowering and engaging the residents of Greater Cincinnati.

Learn more about 2022 Feist Tea by the Woman’s City Club of Greater Cincinnati below.

wcc-2022-feist-tea-honorees-buening-currence-porterDownload

Here lies Octavia #8th Day Challenge

Here lies Octavia (1875-1888)

Gravestone, Octavia Carter, 1875-1888

Gravestone of Octavia Carter, 1875-1888.

I breathe out the dandelion seeds
and roll in the hay bales
I push up the ryegrass
to grip their roots.

I run my scarred hands
in the thistle nests
and pat the ruts to keep them worn.
Dust rouges my cheeks
as I swing around the peeling tree trunks.

I’ve watched you
since the devil gripped my foot in the stirrup.
You have also absorbed death
between each sunset for a century.

I wish you could hear my song
and your laughter could
echo with mine,
that we still had a life
among these slaty hills.

Come now,
this is nowhere for the living.

© Melissa Currence 2015

This poem came together because of Halloween and listening to my mother’s stories about our family. She retold me the story of Octavia, who died when she was 13 years old after a horse riding accident. This picture is of her gravestone from 2013, 125 years after she died.

While the idea of the poem came together quickly, I worked on it for days. Since each word choice is so important in a poem, I can drive me crazy trying to search for the right one. I find if I am editing a poem a lot, I often have to look at the first draft to remember what I was trying to say.

What is your editing process? Let me know in the comments.

The #8thDayChallenge

I hope you will join me in the 8th Day Challenge!

Let’s Stay in Touch!

Cincinnati Business Courier Feature – Forty Under 40

Melissa Currence in Cincinnati Business Courier

Thanks to the Cincinnati Business Courier for featuring me in this week’s edition!

Let’s Stay in Touch!

Nora On Holiday #8thDayChallenge

sanka_coffee

This orange jar is seared in my memory.

Nora on Holiday

Her kitchen produced a thousand
tubs of mustard potato salad
and gallons of country gravy with
coffee splashed in for color.
She knew Elvis was the
best-looking man to ever
have lived and kept
an army of whatnots in arm’s reach.
The Sanka jar sat in the center
of the table for any
who happened to visit,
holding their mugs for tales
of Avon ladies, icy commutes
on inherited mountain roads,
Teamster meetings and the procedures
that cut things out of the family.
Curlers were rolled in
for Monday morning
but the house coat
set her free until

© Melissa Currence 2015

I’m still inspired by the “I am from…” poem prompt from George Ella Lyons. So I went in search of family poetry prompts and found a helpful post from Melissa Donovan on WritingForward.com. I saw the column for Grandparents and got inspired to write about my Grandma Nora, who passed away in 2011.

The #8thDayChallenge

I hope you will join me in the 8th Day Challenge!

Let’s Stay in Touch!

 

Thanks, Dad

When I was graduating from Ohio State with my master’s, my dad, Mike, was retiring.

He had built a respectable business for over 20 years as an insurance salesman. It was a hard roundup; many others rode beside him and couldn’t keep up. The key, he said, was don’t try to just snap up the big game and feast, but go for the small wins and keep the chuck wagon well-stocked.

So he asked me one day if I wanted to take over his business. He’d get me started, handing me his clients and teaching me his cowboy ways. But I brushed it off immediately. I wanted to mold myself myself.

I see now it was a privileged thing for him to offer me this gift. It was something tangible for me to start my life with. I never thanked him properly for his offer. I was a daughter engulfed in riches, being presented with nothing but opportunities.

So I thank you now, Dad, even though you are gone. I wanted to tell you I was selected in this year’s local Forty Under 40 Class. I know you would have been proud I’m thriving on this cattle drive.

Melissa Currence Forty Under 40

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