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Social/Business Meeting
January 19th, 2012 7:00pm
A Social/Business Meeting will be held this month to discuss upcoming programs and goals for the brand new year of 2012!
Whether you are a member, guest or just curious about joining Sisterlynk - please plan on coming out for a wonderful evening.
Directions will be sent to all those who are able to attend. Please RSVP to info@sisterlynk.net.
Celebration! Celebration! Celebration!
November 17, 2011 7:00pm
It’s that season of the year again----when we come together to celebrate the good times we’ve had together, to welcome new friends, to honor those who have been our speakers across the year’s ongoing program series: “Making One’s Life,” to applaud our Board of Directors for their commitment, and to give recognition to the 2011-2012 recipient of the Alice Conger Patterson Scholarship.
Each year since SisterLynk began, we’ve been hosted by Linda Crumpler, not only a chemist by career but also a “kitchen chemist!” Her gourmet meals are lovely, and once again she is opening her home to host us at our end-of-the-year celebration of SisterLynk for our members, friends, Board of Directors, speakers, and scholarship honoree.
This year Linda will be preparing and serving her special recipes from a brand new state-of-the-art kitchen, designed by her, to accommodate her delight in cooking up delectable dishes.
We hope you’ll join us for this special evening of sharing stories, talking about the year’s experiences, gathering updates, and looking ahead to our own individual and collective goals----and dreams!
Directions will be sent to all those who are able to attend. Please RSVP to info@sisterlynk.net.
Digging For Clues - Travels in Time
Dr. Linda Stine
October 20th, 2011
Life does throw unexpected challenges! To that Dr. Linda Stine can attest. She talked about some of those as she took us through some of her travels as a professional archaeologist, digging at sites ranging from 9,000 years ago to as recent as the 1950’s. Despite that span of time, she loved entering each moment and exploring those worlds and digging for the clues to discover who lived there, what they did, and what we can learn from them as well. Who wouldn’t! Haven’t you at least once tried to dig to China or tried to find an arrowhead or a dinosaur bone? What about a chipped piece of pottery that you were certain belonged to people of long ago in that far away land of “before me”?
Linda’s journey, like that of so many of us, has had its twists and turns---from those digs across continents to running her own sole proprietorship to becoming a professor at UNCG.
As an historical archaeologist, she focuses on how diverse social groups expressed their ideology and managed their socioeconomic relationships. She works with her students to understand what this button meant or that nail, what this dip in the earth means or that oddly placed stone. They are all clues. Now she takes her students along with her to various community archaeology projects such as this summer’s dig at the site in Battleground Park, believed to be the where the “town” of Guilford Courthouse once stood. Did it? How did she get there? Where did she begin on her journey? Has it been one smooth trip? Or rocky at times, just as the sites she digs?
We gathered for the conversation and the fun of being together and exploring one another’s journeys as SisterLynk continues to converse about “making one’s life.”
On Becoming
Laura Fennell
September 15th, 2011
As we live our lives, we may not even be thinking about making ourselves. We’re traveling along, being confronted by day to day, and just dealing with that: day to day, day by day. Life happens! But, do we make it happen? If so, how? When do we question the path we’re taking? Is it downhill or uphill? Is it a destructive choice or constructive?
Laura Fennell, personal trainer, wife, mother, marathoner, more----talked about turning from addictive behavior to healthful living. In our living room conversation, we met an entrepreneur who is intentionally making her life by consciously examining the forks in the road. Life is about deciding “self”----- As Steve Jobs said in his famous speech to Stanford graduates: “Your time is limited, so don't live their lives, live your own life.” Laura shared an honest and inspiring story about the choices she has made as she lives her “own life.”
Certified through ISSA and AFAA, Laura has turned a love of fitness into her life's work - Pinnacle Fitness. Please learn more about her at pinnaclefitnessnc.wordpress.com.
If It's Tuesday, It's Paris
Linda Crumpler
June 16th, 2011
If it's Tuesday, it's Paris (this week, perhaps London the following week). And, if it's Friday, it could be Kuala Lumpur, Beijing, Bangladesh, or Cairo.
How do you make a life all over again after a career overseeing Analytical research laboratories at one of the largest companies in the US? How do you re-think yourself after a downsize? What about taking all that expertise and turning it into a consulting opportunity that takes you around the world? As a scientist----a chemist, Linda Crumpler did just that.
But is that all there is to making one's life? What about the in-between times? Life is not a straight line, nor is it one career --- or career only. It includes the in-between times which are as important as the seemingly singular path of business or professional. For Linda, those "tween" times include a husband of almost 35 years, a son, orchids grown in her backyard greenhouse, knitting, cooking----and not just your everyday opening of the refrigerator and deciding what to have. No, in her brand-new re-designed kitchen, Linda composes dishes to live for just as she composes other aspects of her life.
Annual Meeting & Pot Luck
May 26th, 2011
One of the constants in life is change. We find that in each of our lives---how we live, what work we choose to do, what we value, how we express those values.
This month was the time for change in the SisterLynk year; it’s a time when we gave thanks to those who have been our organization’s leaders and when we welcomed new leaders. But, we didn’t just have a business meeting to make the changes; we had a celebration with food as well.
If you were able to come to our Celebration of Change Pot Luck---whether as an official member of SisterLynk, or a curious reader of our website, or someone who has a passion for empowering others---you were able to enjoy what Sisterlynk is all about!
We began with food and toasts; celebrating and looking ahead to an already packed year of activities and programs!
Kathy Proctor
April 28th, 2011
Life unfolds sometimes in such unexpected ways. What we do with that unfolding can make a huge difference in our lives. Our speaker this month never would have dreamed she would be sitting with Michele Obama at the State of the Union address in January of 2011. But that’s exactly where she found herself-----and all because of how she’s making her life. President Obama was so impressed by how Kathy Proctor is making her life that he invited her to the State of the Union.
When Kathy was growing up in Trinity, North Carolina, she wasn’t planning beyond the immediate----going to work after high school, working in the furniture industry, staying in the neighborhood. But six years ago, she began to realize that furniture factory jobs were dwindling. As a result, she decided to make some changes to her life. Taking her life in her own hands has opened up the kind of amazing experiences as the one she had in January. Quite a story! - and a special thank you to Kathy for sharing that with us.
Examining Life Influences: Racism
March 17th, 2011
Thursday, 7-9 pm
Alice Patterson and Ann Bonner began a dialogue about the influence of racism in and on our lives, in and on their lives. The evening session then engaged all of us in examining the issue of racism as it may have influenced our own experiences and our own life journey.
Over the course of the next several months, SisterLynk programs will focus on the ongoing theme of "Making One's Life" when confronted with major societal issues such as racism, peer pressure (no matter what age one is), growing up a girl, being the "other," etc.
We hope you'll join in these critical conversations that not only have shaped our lives but from which we can learn, and especially as we go about encouraging and helping others to grow into and make their own lives. This series is about not only making one's life but also living the examined life: who am I and why do I think and act as I do?
In the spirit of our opening conversation, a one-day training experience - “RE-Framing the Conversation: an Intro to Understanding and Analyzing Systemic Racism,“ is available to everyone. For more information, click here to download a pdf for more information.
Everyone in attendance enjoyed a wonderful and engaging evening of fellowship. Sisterlynk extends a special thanks to Alice Patterson and Ann Bonner for facilitating this special evening.
Special Event
February 3rd, 2011
We enjoyed a special SisterLynk gathering to hear and converse with Kristen Lavelle. The topic was “What is White about Education.” This was an encore presentation of a talk that Kristen gave to a very responsive audience in Greensboro at the Downtown Public Library late last year. We were very fortunate that Kristen agreed to give this presentation at a special SisterLynk gathering before she moves from the Triad and days before she was to defend her dissertation at Texas A&M on the topic of “Our Generation Had Nothing to Do with Discrimination”: White Southern Memory of Jim Crow and Civil Rights.
General Business Meeting
January 20th, 2011
A general business meeting was held to kick-off this new year. Members and guests joined together for our first gathering in 2011. A good turnout, the comraderie and interest proved important as we move forward toward achieving our goals in 2011.
Conversation on Making One's Life
October 21st, 2010
We had an engaging Conversation on Making One's Life! Talked, ate, laughed while learning a little about each one's journey which revealed interesting and sometimes surprising! nuggets about our wonderfully diverse group. While our members have come together from varied paths, it is those wonderful individual journeys and strengths that enable Sisterlynk to continue to grow and work toward our common goals.
Miriam Delaney Heard - Attorney, Legal Aid of North Carolina, Greensboro & Author
September 23rd, 2010
Miriam Delaney Heard was raised in LaGrange, Georgia. For the last 19 years, she has been lucky enough to be married to her best friend. She and her husband have a fifteen-year-old daughter. Soon after moving to North Carolina, serendipity led Miriam to Salem College’s Continuing Studies program where she completed her B.A. in English with a Minor in Creative Writing in 2006.
Miriam received her J.D. from Elon University School of Law in 2009 as a member of the charter class. Even while attending, she continued writing and was awarded impressive scholarships that helped her with her law school tuition. She is now a staff attorney at Legal Aid of N.C., Inc., a statewide non-profit law firm that provides free legal services to low-income North Carolinians.
When she is not working in her vocation, Miriam devotes time to her family and to her avocation – creative writing.
We thoroughly enjoyed hearing Miriam speak on her own journey in our continuing series, "Making One's Life".
Ena Stackhouse
June 17th, 2010
Who would have thought that a childhood spent in Winston-Salem would lead eventually to the “wilds” of Africa where our June speaker leads her own Safaris, counts her Kenyan neighbors as her friends, and explores worlds that many of us only dream about. In keeping with the theme of our SisterLynk Series: “Making One’s Life,” Ena Stackhouse has made her life in a unique and exciting way.
Her Safari company, Enaja Safaris and Tours is a venture born from love. Ena Stackhouse had traveled the world and lived in Europe, but it was that first trip to Africa that changed her life. The people, the countryside, and the animals enticed her to visit time and again. Soon she brought friends and family along to experience the splendor of Africa, and in the process she built a network of relationships through her many trips to East Africa and beyond. Now her safaris even take her travelers to such faraway places as Papua New Guinea, where she will be going in November.
It is not travel alone that keeps Ena going back to Africa; it is also the people. Through her business, Ena has helped several Kenyans start their own small businesses and part of all of her safari profits has gone toward helping support a clinic, two schools, and an orphanage in Africa.
Ruth Anderson
May 20th, 2010
Ruth Anderson began her professional/academic career as a professor of communication, tenured at NC State. She left there to put into corporate practice what she had learned and taught at the university. Along the way, she made a hairpin turn. Thus, the title of her new book Hairpin Turn: Trusting Your Heart's Direction in Leadership and Life.
When Ruth started her journey as a corporate vice president, she wore her hair in a tight bun. Her look matched what she thought should be her corporate stance. Along the way, the hairpins began to slip out and she took a turn in how she viewed the idea of leadership. She has written about that turn. Ruth shared both her compelling story and how she proposes that others can make the same kind of transformational shift she did no matter a woman’s age or stage.
For the past eight years, Ruth has been executive director of a non-profit -
The Servant Leadership School of Greensboro. There, she leads in how to engage one’s whole, authentic self.
Emily Herring Wilson
April 15th, 2010
Emily's passion is connecting with other women through friendship, organizations, reading and writing.
She believes that each life has stories worth telling, and her commitment is to help right the wrongs of history by writing about women who have been excluded.
In researching mostly private "ordinary lives" she discovers extraordinary achievements, not by the world's standards perhaps but by human standards in which "happiness" may be only a moment of being. In writing about others, she has learned to tell her own story. She believes in women helping women.
In a free-ranging conversation, Emily talked about women she has known, books she has written, and ways in which each of us might tell our own stories.
Emily is author of HOPE AND DIGNITY: OLDER BLACK WOMEN OF THE SOUTH, co-author with Margaret Supplee Smith of NORTH CAROLINA WOMEN; MAKING HISTORY, and author of three books about southern gardener, Elizabeth Lawrence, who said, "I want you to know how much I have loved life and how necessary it was just the way I played it."
Emily's writing has been praised by, among others, columnist for the New York Times - Verlyn Klinkenborg. Her books are loved by writers, readers and book reviewers, alike.
Diana Greene
March 18th, 2010
"My creed is wonder." - Ada Alden
Writer, photographer, and teacher Diana Greene described how living life with a sense of wonder means never waiting for someone to open the door for you. Timidity and fear too often hold women back from living life fully. Diana has trained her ear to listen to the inner voice that says, "Go ahead, open the door."
For more information on Diana's work, please visit her website -
www.dianagreene.com
Photography Exhibition In Support of 'The Nyanya Project'
Held on December 3rd, 2009
Blessings
823 Reynolda Rd
Winston-Salem, NC
Sisterlynk proudly champions the causes of women in our community making a difference!
Founder of The Nyanya Project, Mary Martin Niepold, was recently named a 2009 Purpose Prize Fellow, an honor for social entrepreneurs over 60 who are using their experience and passion to take on society’s biggest challenges.
If you were not able to attend, please consider an online donation in support of this amazing effort to assist African grandmothers caring for their grandchildren orphaned by AIDS. The Nyanya Project provides work training skills to teach the grandmothers sustainable income. Started in 2007, there are now programs in Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda, helping more than 140 grandmothers.
For more information, visit www.nyanyaproject.org .
We celebrate women who are empowering themselves and achieving their dreams and are committed to the same for women across the Triad, the country, the world.
Last year, the group set a goal to listen to and converse with women in the North Carolina Piedmont Triad who are achieving important work for the betterment of all of us. Our first such conversation this past year was with Mary Martin Niepold, who boldly responded to the plight of grandmothers who must raise their orphaned grandchildren as a result of the devastating epidemic of AIDS in Africa. See www.nyanyaproject.org for more information.
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