Menovulography / Anna Oravecz / Part III

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	Here is Anna years later, wearing a lace collar instead of a cap and bandana. Anna is now a full-time homemaker, and her husband Nick an auto worker. Because of the Great Depression, Nick started working half-days. My dad says the kids thought this was great, because Nick took them to the park. But half-days meant half-pay: In a Ford plant, only $2.50 instead of $5 a day.
Anna and Nick Kachman, and four sons (my dad in middle, bottom row)

Eventually Anna and Nick went into the bar business, first as partners in ‘The Tip Top Club’ and then as owners of ‘Nick’s Bar.’ My dad says they chose running a bar “because it’s something you can do without any skills.” But certainly Anna’s experience working in her parents’ store contributed to their success – that, and having four sons who could provide, as my dad put it, “plenty of slave labor,” even though the sons did stay in school.

Pens from ‘Nick’s Bar,’ inscribed “Nick and Anna Kachman, Proprietors.”

First the children attended Saints Cyril & Methodius Catholic School. My dad was a “difficult student” – the last straw came when he glued messy pieces of coal to a drawing. His homework assignment had been to draw a picture of how the family home was heated. Anna was angry when the school told her that her son could no longer attend. She told them, in so many words: “You can’t kick my son out, I’m pulling him out.”

Anna Kachman’s rosary beads.

	As Roman Catholics and bar owners without much formal education, Anna and Nick most likely never saw this beautiful drawing, which shows how to check for proper placement of a diaphragm.
Medical drawing by Dickinson–Freret, 1939, in “Techniques of Conception Control,” Dickinson and Morris

	Note the similarity to this famous painting done by another Catholic. If I can point out this similarity now, it’s partly because as a little girl, Anna told me: “If you want to be an artist, you have to draw figure 8’s,” and she took a pencil and showed me how.
The Creation of Adam, Michealangelo, 1510...and Anna’s granddaughter, 2006

Here’s Nick, Anna and Nick’s second oldest son, showing off something he’s made with his own (mittened) hands – a snowman. No one ever got kicked out of school for putting coal on a snowman! Imagine Anna and Nick had a daughter, who insisted on calling the figure she made out of snow a ‘snowwoman.’ If Anna had found out the neighborhood kids were teasing her daughter about it, what do you think Anna would have done?

“Snowman,” Nick

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MOLTXPLORATION:

Women and religious art: Find three women who created art with a religious theme...working within three different religious traditions. Can be any medium: painting, sculpture, textiles, the written word, music. How are these three artist’s biographies similar? How are they different?

MOLTXPERIMENT:

1. Get a hold of an insert from a box of tampons – the kind with an illustration, as to the proper way to insert a tampon, as well as a warning about tampon-related toxic shock syndrome.

2. Using the above medical drawing as a guide, think of a way to re-do the insert so that it is a beautiful work of art, something someone might want to frame and hang on their bathroom or bedroom wall. Rewrite the text as well, to make it as poetic as possible.

3. Create the tampon insert artwork/poetry, and get feedback on it from friends.

Mission Statement / Critique of the Museum of Menstruation and Women’s Health: Why do we need another museum of this kind?	X	UFOs	Art, Poetry, Film and Music of the Menovulatory Lifetime		From Protection to Expression: The Future of Menstrual Advertising	Menstrual Monday	Broken Tampon Memorial Fountain
			Menovulography: the years from puberty to menopause, told as a story with pictures			Toxic Protection / Confidence Shock
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