The Sydney Feminists

It’s the game we bring out for guests or late at night on holiday with family, the staple for board-game-day with friends: Monopoly. If you take a closer look at the label, it says this game was created in 1935 by Hasbro Games. But, in reality, Monopoly was created 32 years earlier by the long-forgotten and uncredited Elizabeth Magie. Elizabeth Magie was born in 1866 in Illinois. She was the daughter of a newspaper publisher and orator, James Magie, who travelled with Abraham Lincoln in the 1850s. She inherited her father’s passion and said she was “described as ‘a chip off the old block’”, which she took as a compliment.  She also disregarded gender stereotypes in that she did not try to find a husband until age 44, and instead chose to work as a stenographer by day and a comedian by night. She was reported to draw huge laughs from the crowd. Image description: a black and white portrait of Elizabeth Magie as an old woman.  Her father, James, ran for of...

Recently, while I was reading biographies of some great dreamers, such as   Kahlil Gibran, I pondered the word ‘dream’ and how influential it is in an individual’s life. One night, I asked myself a question, which I want each one of you to think over: what does it mean to dream? Our fantasies may be called a dream. The ambitions towards which we work, our thoughts and visions, these are called dreams. My musings led me to a bookshop where I picked up a book based on the theme of dreams. But this time, the dream is a very unusual one, which demands a long journey and some untypical rituals. “The Valkyries” is written by the bestselling Brazilian novelist, Paulo Coelho. It was published in 1992by Harper Collins. The image is a close up of my hands, surrounded by nature. I am holding and reading “The Valkyries" by Paulo Coelho. In this book, Paulo Coelho, along with his wife Christina Oiticica, embark on a journey to the Mojave Desert to find Paulo’s angel. Pa...