• Inspired by the struggles of the past and determined to change the future

    Watch MAKERS: Women Who Make America Trailer on PBS.
    See more from Makers: Women Who Make America.

    “MAKERS: Women Who Make America tells the remarkable story of the most sweeping social revolution in American history, as women have asserted their rights to a full and fair share of political power, economic opportunity, and personal autonomy. It’s a revolution that has unfolded in public and private, in courts and Congress, in the boardroom and the bedroom, changing not only what the world expects from women, but what women expect from themselves. MAKERS brings this story to life with priceless archival treasures and poignant, often funny interviews with those who led the fight, those who opposed it, and those first generations to benefit from its success. Trailblazing women like Hillary Rodham Clinton, Ellen DeGeneres and Oprah Winfrey share their memories, as do countless women who challenged the status quo in industries from coal-mining to medicine. Makers captures with music, humor, and the voices of the women who lived through these turbulent times the dizzying joy, aching frustration and ultimate triumph of a movement that turned America upside-down.”

    Tonight at 8 ET/7 Central on your local PBS station.

    Are you going to watch?

  • Quote of the day

    “Exercise the writing muscle every day, even if it is only a letter, notes, a title list, a character sketch, a journal entry. Writers are like dancers, like athletes. Without that exercise, the muscles seize up.” –Jane Yolen

  • A ‘Typical’ Night

    Laptop and notepadPeople occasionally ask me what it is that I do for a living. They know I’m a journalist. They know I write for The Huffington Post. They know I work the graveyard shift from my home in New Hampshire. Still they wonder, “What’s a typical night like?”

    Here’s one of the greatest things about my job: There is no typical night.

    Working as a journalist on the graveyard shift is very similar to being a firefighter. Some nights you’re busy putting out fires and other nights you’re just sitting at the fire house, honing your skills, waiting for a fire to happen. The key thing is, you’re on duty when the fire breaks out. Or in my case, when news occurs.

    During a typical week, I’ll cover one or two big breaking news stories. The rest of the time, I’m updating the homepage, checking wires, filing news stories/features, copyediting other people’s work, posting items to Twitter and Facebook, sending out breaking news alerts, scanning social media and competitor’s sites for interesting content, searching other sections of our site for stories that deserve more play, reading through more than 1,000 emails, coordinating content with other editors, handling any corrections that come in overnight and waiting for news to occur somewhere in the world.

    Last week, however, was utterly insane.

    Every single evening, a major news story broke on my shift. On Sunday, I handled the North Korean nuclear test and the United Nations’ response. Monday night saw the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI. Between the manhunt for Christopher Dorner, the former LAPD police officer accused of committing a series of shooting attacks on police officers and their families, and the State of the Union speech, Tuesday was beyond busy. On Wednesday, Paralympian Oscar Pistorius was arrested and charged with killing his girlfriend. In between all of these stories, I also penned a brief about the president doing an “exploding fist bump” with Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), and an obituary for a man who appeared on several episodes of “Storage Wars.”

    I would have covered the meteor that exploded above Siberia on Thursday, except I took the night off to spend Valentine’s Day with my awesome husband. Had I been on duty, however, my entire shift would have been dedicated to covering the 1,200+ people who were injured and the massive amount of damage caused by the space rock.

    Light only knows what’ll happen this week.