These "ends of an era" sure seem to be coming fast and furious(ly) these days.
There has never been a time in my life when this woman's name wasn't synonymous with equality and women's lib -- how many times did Archie Bunker invoke her in a fit of disgust? -- so this loss stings. We were lucky to have her, a true original.
My pal Tim Murphy shared a sweet story about a brief encounter with the Ms. Magazine legend, which I think you will also enjoy as much as I did.
May she rest in power.
He writes:
In 2016, I was a reader at the book festival Sean Strub started in Milford PA when he was mayor there. The festival was centered at the hotel Sean owned at the time, and when I came down to the hotel dining room, there was Sean with a small table of people including Gloria Steinem, then 82, who was a marquee guest at the festival. So I ended up sitting next to her and telling her it was an honor to meet her. Then her friend said, "Gloria, your session starts in 5 minutes." Ms. Steinem said: "I've barely touched my omelette," so I -- who was starving and hadn't ordered food yet -- offered to eat it. She said, "Good -- my mother always said it's wrong to waste food."That's a fun story but it doesn't convey how remarkable I thought she was. Particularly as a journalist all my life, I admired her especially for her smart, funny (and far more progressive/intersectional than her colleagues') columns for New York magazine in its earliest Nixon-era years. And as someone who has mainly been an HIV/AIDS and LGBTQ advocacy journalist my whole life, I always admired how Ms. did muscular advocacy journalism in such a fun and compelling package. Certainly it paved the way for many such future mags including POZ, which Sean started.I hope that, in her final days and hours, Ms. Steinem was suffused with a strong sense of the remarkable, courageous, moral, well-lived life that she lived.
