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Show KATHLEEN NORMS Go to Next Political Meeting an with her husband sat next to me. She said it was her first experience ex-perience and she felt out of place and shy. Presently a rather heavy rubicund man whose looks didn't impress me pleasantly arose and made a mild-sounding proposition as to a certain large tract that was to be purchased "for an amusement amuse-ment park." My mild neighbor was on her feet like a flash, and her voice rang out as if she had just completed com-pleted a course in public speaking. The indicated tract was not to be bought, the franchise for its purchase pur-chase was not to be granted, she said clearly, unless it was specified speci-fied that nothing resembling a race track should ever be placed there. The ensuing debate was one of the most thrilling I ever have heard. The rubicund man and a few friends of his were all amused indulgent . mildness and reassurance; reassur-ance; they were good speakers. My little woman was ineloquent, but she found plenty of support before the meeting was over, and the offer, was declined. Last year they wanted to send her to the capital as a state senator, but she was caring for a new baby and had to refuse. But she never misses any political meeting, babies or no babies. THE STORY of Eugenie Anderson ought to give about 80,000 American women something to think about. It should be an example exam-ple to them, and .it well might make them ashamed of themselves. Mrs. Anderson is, of course, our new ambassadress to Denmark; the first woman to be so honored by the greatest country in the world. I never have met her, and until she so to speak put it on the map, I never heard of the small town from which she comes. It is probably smaller than your town. But this I know of her, and this is what makes me admire her and wish that the 80,000 women aforementioned afore-mentioned would wake up and make themselves half as valuable citizens as she has made herself. She has a family, a husband and home. Many women consider that these responsibilities are enough to keep them busy for many hours a day and entitled to what leisure they can win at night. Lot of Silly Men These cares didn't keep her from attending an apparently unimportant unimport-ant political meeting some years ago. Just such a meeting as takes place in your town and mine every autumn: "a lot of silly men getting up and shouting," you perhaps thank them. Her attending that meeting led this unknown, uninfluen-tial uninfluen-tial small-town woman straight up the ladder to the position of high honor that she holds today. But as I say, I am not writing for house mothers, for those busy young wives who have little children, chil-dren, and sitters, and washing machines ma-chines and formulas on their minds, ". . . our new ambassadress . . ." as well as the man who comes home tired, and must find a quiet house and a hot dinner. Not even for older mothers, who know the supreme importance of keeping the teen-agers in hand, with pencil games, and homework help, and Saturday plan, and careful care-ful watching of young intimacies and young independence. No, I'm trying to reach those women anywhere from 40 to 65 who have nothing to do. Nothing to do. in a world that is reaching the social, financial, political crises that ours is! She Looks Puzzled ' Some of them are widows, many divorced, some unmarried, left with slender incomes that just save them from financial anxiety. Speak of politics to any of them and she merely looks puzzled, and tells you who her presidential candidate can-didate was two years ago. As if a presidential election were the beginning be-ginning and end of the mysterious subject called politics, as indeed it probably is, to her. Now my advice to these aimless ladies to to go to the next district meeting; it will be announced in' the paper. Go right on with that weekly two-hour reading to the blind or at the Red Cross headquarters, head-quarters, in which you take such pride, but go to the political meeting, meet-ing, too. You will find it the most exciting thing you ever attended. You will come home boiling with high feeling. I went to a small town political meeting some three years ago, although al-though the violence of my own political effort had been expended years earlier on the war and peace and intervention and non-intervention issues. A very small neat worn- |