Meet the Participants
Charlotte Stokes
From time to time we hear from NDB participants about their activities. Charlotte Stokes sent us a copy of a newspaper article about her. Mrs. Stokes is a 90-year-old woman from Philadelphia with RA. She creates bronze sculptures that are displayed across the United States, from the assisted living home where she resides, to prominent locations in Philadelphia, to the Montana Governor’s office. Her local newspaper, the Chestnut Hill Local, gave us permission to reprint the article. Thanks to Charlotte and the Chestnut Hill Local. Here are some highlights:
“Charlotte’s story is one that reaches foreign lands and spans decades, chasing all sorts of pursuits and interests.… And it is all recorded in her artwork, the walls crowded with canvases or the books stacked on the floor, and the sculptures everywhere that occasionally jump out from the woodwork. Behind each piece of her art there is a romantic tale, a small chapter of a colorful past relegated to some corner of the room.
“Her most recent sculpture, and perhaps the most storied, is a life-size bust of Chief New Chest, a Piegan (Blackfeet) Indian.… She was advised that it would be accepted by the Montana Historical Society, and so the chief’s bust was trekked across state lines to a museum display out west. When new Montana governors are voted in, they walk the floor of the museum to pick out artwork to decorate the new office. Brian Schweitzer, the present governor, chose the bust immediately, and it now sits across from his desk.
“Although the inspiration for the bust was a photograph, the great majority of her art is based on experience and encounters, places she has seen and people she’s met. Her more common muse is the passerby, the street people who will never know they’ve been shaped in clay, hardened and preserved for all time. She works from a sharp photographic memory and remarkable mental notes about the way an arm is positioned, the way a certain smile bends or the way someone’s hair falls just so. The results are sculptures that are not completely true to their subjects, but more accurate to the ways she sees them, or remembers them, which means there is a lot of her in the outcome.
“Charlotte Stokes is the youngest 90-year-old I’ve ever seen. The giddiness is still in her voice; she’s interested in everything (including her massive collection of rare fans); she has this ability to see beauty in unnoticed places, and she occasionally acts shy; there is still this youthful energy that enables her to make such a big splash in the world despite her age.”
The complete article is online here: http://chestnuthilllocal.com/archives/051905/locallife1.html
Put this on your reading list
NDB participant and author Mary Felstiner has a new book out about her struggle with Rheumatoid Arthritis. She was diagnosed at age 28. It’s called Out Of Joint: A Private & Public Story Of Arthritis.
Part memoir, part medical and social history, Out of Joint folds Mary’s private experience into far-reaching investigations of a socially hidden ailment and of any chronic condition—how to handle love, work, sexuality, fatigue, betrayal, pain, time, mortality, rights, myths, and memory. Publishers Weekly has this to say about the book:
“Mary Felstiner brings a feminist’s eye and a historian’s tool kit to this narrative of her decades-long struggle with rheumatoid arthritis (RA).… Felstiner, a professor of history at San Francisco State University, traces the growing scientific understanding of RA, from the earliest accounts in medical antiquity to the latest theories of how pregnancy might trigger the disorder. She touches on treatments, from antimalarial drugs through cortisone and the now-blackballed painkiller Vioxx..… the book’s total effect is powerful, and her major chords strike true: RA is a devastatingly disabling condition with steep private and public costs; its disproportionate effects on women have not been adequately addressed; its social, political and interpersonal implications are significant.”
The book is 218 pages, published by the University of Nebraska Press (August 8, 2005). List price is $25. Dr. Felstiner is donating her future proceeds from the book to the Arthritis Foundation. You can read more about the book at the University of Nebraska Press web site: http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu.