“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards."
-Steve Jobs, founder, Apple, Inc.
In the early 1970s, news consumers saw relentless reports about the bloodshed in Vietnam and one antiwar demonstration after another in U.S. cities. Rebecca Kennedy was one of them, whose television was a household companion while managing her daily domestic responsibilities. She wished there was a news service that provided antidotal positive reports to all the bad news and set out to create it with her kitchen-table publication, The Silver Lining News (SLN).
It was when society (and her husband) were still acting on the reverberations of old marriage bar laws in the United States. When Kennedy founded SLN in 1972, the laws still existed in Ireland. Until 1973 independent Ireland enforced a marriage bar prohibiting married women from working in civil service roles outside the home.
In fact, despite opportunities in 2024 for voters to approve amendments that would have changed the wording on the constitution that defines marriage as the basis "on which the family is founded" (to a clause stating that families can be founded on marriage and "durable relationships") and remove the wording that "mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labor to the neglect of their duties in the home," voters rejected the referendums and those definitions remain today.
Despite the 1970s global gender-role culture, though, Kennedy held onto her dream and vision that one day, the SLN concept would champion stories about positive change, and it does. SLN is a portfolio of positive news or news that waits for a positive outcome in the future.
This site also contains a few contributions from a couple of friends whose work captures the SLN voice and some rare vintage public domain video footage showing the news that inspired Rebecca's publishing goals.
ABC News Australia video after the March 8, 2024 vote to change Ireland's Constitution to redefine women's roles in the workplace and home. The vote took place on International Women's Day.
SLN is living proof of a time when gender inequality didn't win.
Connecting dots from the Vietnam War:
The days after North Vietnam moved into South Vietnam on April 30, 1975, The International Rescue Committee (IRC) helped over 120,000 refugees restore new roots in America. According to IRC, It was the largest resettlement effort in American history
According to Bich Tran, Vietnamese people hold strong positive sentiments toward the United States, and many want to live and study in America. She reports that Vietnam is ranked sixth among source countries for international students, adding up to $1 billion annually to the U.S. economy. According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), more than 21,600 Vietnamese students attend U.S. universities (before the Covid-19 pandemic, the number was over 30,000).
You are welcome here.
"Disability Pride initially started as a day of celebration in 1990—the year that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was signed into law. That same year, Boston held the first Disability Pride Day." - The American Bar Association
Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) also includes accommodating Persons With Disabilities (PWD), who are among the most marginalized groups in Western societies, according to the International Journal for Equity Health. We use only sans serif fonts on SLN to make it accessible. to all.
An evolution of the "Lightning Bollt" Disability Pride Flag, which is safer for people with visually-triggered disabilities.
Get in touch:
lkennedy.sln@gmail.com
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