{"id":17321,"date":"2022-01-26T00:12:27","date_gmt":"2022-01-26T00:12:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/?p=17321"},"modified":"2022-01-25T21:15:42","modified_gmt":"2022-01-25T21:15:42","slug":"three-mavens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/2022\/01\/26\/three-mavens\/","title":{"rendered":"THREE MAVENS"},"content":{"rendered":"

By JoEllen Collins<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"
JoEllen Collins\u2014a longtime resident of the Wood River Valley\u2014is a teacher, writer, fabric artist, choir member and unabashedly proud grandma known as \u201cBibi Jo.\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Much has been written praising Betty White, recently deceased just short of her 100th birthday. Watching \u201cGolden Girls\u201c was a hint of what was to come for me, as long as I could keep laughing. I had met Betty White twice, when I was on \u201cPassword\u201c as a young bride in the late sixties. As Allen Ludden\u2019s devoted wife, she happened to be there occasionally, and I recall her as very friendly. My partner for the game was Carol Burnett, who also was with me later when I was on the tournament of champions. In many ways, Betty White was a role model for me with her gumption and warmth. I also adored her sassy sense of humor and, like me, how she could joke about still enjoying men even if we no longer inhabited our formerly youthful exteriors.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t just miss HER: I also miss other women of her era who made me laugh: Bea Arthur, Mary Tyler Moore, and Phyllis Diller, among the vibrant spirits who broke the glass ceilings of entertainment in fresh and unique ways. I am grateful that Carol Burnett, who is more my age than Betty\u2019s, is still living and thriving in our world. Thank goodness I can watch reruns of the Carol Burnett shows, with classic scenes like the one about the dentist\u2019s first try at his craft, featuring, Tim Conway and Harvey Korman. By the way, when I said \u201cmemorabilia,\u201d Carol got that clue for \u201cattic,\u201d enabling me to win the first show, and then later was my partner with Peter Lawford on the championship edition. She was gracious enough to greet me by my name then and mention how much she had enjoyed playing with me earlier.<\/p>\n

In examining why these women are so important to me, the most obvious truth is that I could giggle and laugh without the obscenities now used so frequently in comedy by both men and women. As a grown-up, I am not insulted by almost any language usage, unless it is racist, seriously demeaning, or completely thoughtless, and I laugh and have laughed at great comics whose repertoire included words that were no-no\u2019s for my era. After all, I used to visit comedy clubs to see Mort Sahl and all the other vibrant rule-breaking comics of my mature years.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t put my finger on what it is\u2014that \u201csomething\u201d about these women who emerged from expected norms as I experienced in the times after World War II. Is it because of my wholesome upbringing? Was it their courage to be truly themselves and risk negative judgments against women who dared to succeed as they did? Or is it simply that they are funny women with whom I might have laughed in my own living room or at gatherings with like-minded friends?<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know why, but my life has been enriched by the intelligence and talent of these women who fed my desire for laughter through the changing tensions of our mutual world.\u00a0 <\/span>Thank you, ladies!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By JoEllen Collins Much has been written praising Betty White, recently deceased just short of her 100th birthday. Watching \u201cGolden Girls\u201c was a hint of what was to come for me, as long as I could keep laughing. I had met Betty White twice, when I was on \u201cPassword\u201c as a young bride in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16827,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","_pvb_checkbox_block_on_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,22],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-17321","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-commentary","8":"category-on-lifes-terms"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17321"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17321\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17325,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17321\/revisions\/17325"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}