Today’s quote is by one of the great authors of my home state of Connecticut, Harriet Beecher Stowe. One of her homes is right here in Hartford.
I did not really know much about Harriet until I attended a fund raiser tea by a local library. At the tea, the curator spoke of woman who I would have loved to have met: a writer, an abolitionist, a feminist. She shared a few pieces of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, one of Stowe’s most memorable writings. As I sat and listened, I pledged that I was going to read this classic. I believe that we may have read excerpts in high school, but never the whole novel. That summer as we traveled to Kentucky, I read Uncle Tom’s Cabin as I had promised. As Eliza escaped across the broken ice of the Ohio, so I drove across it. It was truly surreal.
Later that year, I dragged the kids to the Harriet Beecher Stowe Museum. I was absolutely in awe of this woman. She would have been a force of nature in any era, but in her lifetime, her feats are even more amazing. I encourage you all to get to know her a little better. Here are a great way to do that:
Visit one of her homes:
http://www.harrietbeecherstowecenter.org/index_home.shtml
http://ohsweb.ohiohistory.org/places/sw18/index.shtml
Read about her:
http://www.sparknotes.com/biography/stowe/
Read her works:
http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/s#a115
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