Greetings! On my way to the subway after class last night, another classmate told me one of the reasons she didn't choose to join our group is that Amazon's cheapest copy of Jane Maher's biography, "Her Life and Work," is now $42! Yikes. When I got home I checked, and she was right! But I also found that I had actually gone ahead and ordered a copy along with my other books last week, and paid only $12. Dumb luck for me. Still, the small vendor I bought it from isn't promising delivery until September 26, though I'm hoping for sooner.
In case you haven't bought a copy and can't get it cheaply or quickly enough, here's a pdf version I found:
"Her Life and Work"
http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED403603.pdf
And here's a pdf of Jane Maher's article in the Journal of Basic Writing in 1997, "Writing the Life of Mina P. Shaughnessy."
Writing the Life of Mina P. Shaughnessy"
http://wac.colostate.edu/jbw/v16n1/maher.pdf
So then I did the next thing I always do in researching these days: check Wikipedia, Google Images and YouTube. Alas! Mina Shaughnessy died in 1979, long before ubiquitous camera phones and selfie obsessions. Long before routine videotaping of every conference presentation. So she's still a very elusive figure, brought to life only in words. But Maher's book includes a number of photos that I may be able to photograph and reproduce as part of our presentation. At least I plan to try. And although I couldn't find anything on the CUNY library website, I will pursue any resources they may have. I'm wondering if there's anyone else around who remembers her and who might be willing to talk about her on audiotape? Barbara has some memories, though many of us have already heard them. Might be worth getting them down on tape anyway. Cheers!
