LUPEC Boston is throwing a party-fundraiser this Sunday so come on down!

by Pinky Gonzales
March 30th, beginning at 9:00pm @:
Toro
1704 Washington St
South End, Boston, MA 02118
(617) 536-4300‎
toro-restaurant.com

Come down for a fashionably late-hour toast to Women's History Month
(March), some great sips from local sponsors, and to get your copy of
our brand-spanking new Little Black Book of Cocktails, featuring the
photography of Boston's Matt Demers. Did we mention a killer raffle,
too?

No cover charge, and ALL are welcome, so spread the word!! Cocktail
attire encouraged.

There will be complimentary hors d'oeuvres provided by Ken Oringer &
Toro, and the Ladies of LUPEC have created a specialty drinks list featuring liquids
donated by the good people of St Germain, Hendrick's Gin and Harpoon
Beer, to name a few.

If that's not enough you can jump aboard for the raffle - which includes dinners & goods from Oleana, Tremont 647, No. 9 Park, the Independent, Martignetti Fine Wine & Spirits and more.

ALL PROCEEDS from the sale of specialty cocktails, raffle tickets, and from the Little Black Book will be donated to The Friends Boutique at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, a unique shop designed for people undergoing treatments for cancer. http://www.friendsboutique.org/
This charity was chosen with our friends & relatives in mind who have themselves battled cancer.

Last fall LUPEC Boston partnered with Jane Doe Inc., the Massachusetts Coalition Against Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence and raised more than $10,000 in donations through fundraising initiatives such as a "This One's for the Ladies" drink promotion and the "LUPEC Boston Tea Party" benefit event. We hope to make LADIES NIGHT, as well, a success.

Looking forward to seeing all of you Sunday!

Hello, sucker!

by Pinky Gonzales

...This was the standard greeting you'd likely receive from the jovial, peroxide blonde manning the house at one of several Manhattan speakeasies during Prohibition. Of course, this would foreshadow the spending of all your dough, on illegal hooch and tips for the showgirls. You'd happily fork over $25 (back then no chump change) for a fifth of Scotch, or $2 for a pitcher of water if you brought your own "booster", and whatever else followed. The place would probably be packed, open a few hours later than all the rest, and the wisecracking, witty pal of Mae West named Texas Guinan would be seeing to it you were having a darned good time.

(Ouch! Dancer Drena Beach, 1926.)

Before being seduced into the world of club ownership through bartending and guest emceeing, Texas started out in Vaudville, then in Westerns as an actress and producer. 1917's The Wildcat introduced America's first movie cowgirl.

Her nite club career included "the grandaddy of speakeasies," the El Fey Club, opened in 1924 with gangster Larry Fey. Later came Club Intime, a Dorothy Parker hangout and subterranean spot near Times Square where entry would involve a steep staircase, two bouncers and a peephole. There was also the Rendezvous, the 300 Club, the Argonaut, the Century, the Salon Royal, and Tex Guinan's.

Infamous for being hauled off to the pokey on a regular basis and having her joints shut down by Feds, Texas enjoyed having the band strikeup "The Prisoner's Song" on her way out the door. And always would she deny selling anything but "mixers" to at her clubs, noting "a man could get hurt falling off a bar stool!" Re-opening after raids, she would sometimes wear a necklace of gold padlocks just to show the cops there were no hard feelings.

She worked tirelessly until age 49, when she was stricken by illness and passed away. 12,000 attended her 1933 funeral procession in Manhattan, and a month later to the day of her death, Prohibition was repealed.

Looks like a Women's History Month toast is in store for this gal!

Scoff Law Cocktail (what else?)

1 oz rye whiskey
1 oz dry vermouth
.75 oz fresh lemon juice
.75 oz green Chartreuse (or pomegranate grenadine according to some recipes - also excellent)
2 dashes orange bitters

Shake all ingredients with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

Cheers!

March is Women's History Month!

March is Women's History Month and the ladies of LUPEC Boston could not be more thrilled!

Thru March 31st we'll be offering you as many reasons to raise a glass to unsung women in history as this group of ambitious, classic cocktail-obsessed broads can cobble together...while maintaining our full-time jobs and going about the general day-to-day business of dismantling the patriarchy one drink at a time, that is. Get your cocktail shakers primed!

We'll also be celebrating with a "Ladies Night" Party at Toro on Sunday, March 30th! Stay tuned for more details...

Let's start the month off with a Liberty Cocktail, in honor of each and every one of the women we'll celebrate in the month to come...and ambitious women everywhere!

Liberty Cocktail

1 dash simple syrup
1/3 rum
2/3 Applejack

Stir with ice and strain. Serve in a cocktail glass.

Salut!

Coffee and Doughnuts

During World War II American Red Cross services were in high gear. By the wars end in 1945, over 7.5 million volunteers supported 40,000 paid Red Cross staff around the world. "Nearly every family in America contained a member who had either served as a Red Cross volunteer, made contributions of money or blood, or was a recipient of Red Cross services."

My family's Red Cross volunteer was my Great Aunt Kay.

On June 6, 1945, just about a month after VE Day, Kay Kehoe boarded the Queen Mary to Europe, where she spent the next 18 months traveling all over Great Britain and the Continent as a Clubmobiler. Red Cross Service Clubs offered meals, recreational activities, overnight accommodations and amenities like barbershops and laundries to American soldiers stationed all over the world; Clubmobiles were designed to be like service clubs on wheels.

These half-ton trucks and single-deck buses, acquired by the Red Cross from a former London bus company, were converted to literal welcome wagons. Each was operated by three American Red Cross women and a local driver, and were equipped for "making and serving coffee and doughnuts and for distributing newspapers, chewing gum, and other small items" to the troops. Some had phonographs and loudspeakers, and others were even outfitted with movie projectors.



Kay Kehoe disembarked from the Queen Mary in Scotland, and didn't stop traveling for the next 18 months. She and the girls of Clubmobile Group A boarded a train from Scotland to England, then took a boat across the chilly English channel to France, then boarded another train to Paris. From there, they traveled all over Europe in a truck the size of an ambulance, delivering coffee and doughnuts to troops through the truck's windows. Occasionally they'd stop in service clubs -- Kay remembers a particularly big one in Berlin -- where they'd work as 'club girls', acting as hostesses to the troops. But being on the road was the type of service Kay Kehoe liked best.

\

When it got too hot on the dusty French roads in the summer, the girls of Clubmobile A served lemonade in place of coffee. "Most of the boys were in a staging area, just waiting to go home," says Kehoe. "We'd serve them their lemonade and doughnuts and gab with them, and sometimes they'd invite you to come to the G.I. Club for a dance. There we'd dance and listen to records, and they had beer and soda and pretty much anything you wanted at the clubs."

As for cocktails, says Kay, "they didn't have the kinds of ingredients you'd need to make fancy drinks, like Martinis, Old Fashions, and Manhattans. But, since it was France, you could pretty much always get your hands on cognac, and all the G.I. Clubs had Coca Cola." So that's what they drank.

This weekend, let's raise a glass to Kay Kehoe and the girls of Clubmobile A!

Clubmobile Cocktail

1 1/2 oz Cognac

Fill glass with Coca Cola

Add lemon twist

Serve in a highball glass

A votre sante!

The Hello Girls

In 1917 General "Black Jack" Pershing began his search for bilingual switchboard operators to improve communication between commanders and troops on the European front. The women needed to speak French, be college educated and single. Over 7000 women applied and 450 were selected. Upon completion of military and Signal Corps training at Camp Franklin Maryland the ladies were issued their Army regulation uniforms complete with US crests, Signal Corps crests and dog tags.

By the end of the war over 200 women had served oversees as part of the Hello Girls. The women had been sworn into service, were considered combatants and one of their own, Grace Banker, was awarded the Distinguished Medal of Service by Congress. However, upon returning to the States the Hello Girls were denied veteran status as all military regulations had been written in the male gender. One of the operators, Mearle Eagan Anderson, spent fifty years advocating on behalf of the Hello Girls. Her diligence was rewarded in 1978 when President Jimmy Carter signed a bill recognizing the service of the Hello Girls and awarding them veterans status.

And now a (Mixology Monday) toast to our bilingual fore-broads!

The French 75
2 oz Gin
1 oz fresh lemon juice
2 teaspoons sugar or 1 tsp simple syrup
Champagne

Shake the gin, lemon juice, and sugar in an iced cocktail shaker. Strain into a champagne flute. Fill with Champagne. Garnish with a lemon twist.

Cheers!

Amendment XIX

On this date in 1919 Congress proposed the 19th amendment which, upon ratification, would guarantee women the right to vote.

The history of the suffragist movement began in 1848 at the first Women's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, NY. In 1840, Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton had attended the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London. Unfortunately they were relegated to the balcony as mere observers because they were women. As a result they decided to hold their own convention "to discuss the social, civil and religious rights of women." At the Women's Rights Convention Stanton presented her Declaration of Principles, a document based on the Declaration of Independence which highlighted women's subordinate status. The Declaration of Principles included 12 resolutions, one of which states "That it is the duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves their sacred right to the elective franchise." This set in motion one of the most important eras in women's history.

As the Civil War began the convention continued on a regular basis. The emphasis, however, was turned toward the emancipation of slaves. The belief was that upon emancipation slaves and women would be afforded rights equal to white men. The war ended and the government perceived the issues as two separate causes. Abraham Lincoln declared, "This hour belongs to the negro."

In response Susan B Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Frederick Douglass created the American Equal Rights Association in 1866. The goal was to join the cause of sexual equality and racial equality towards the common goal of universal suffrage. Unfortunately the ratification of the fourteenth amendment in 1868, which defined "citizenship" and "voters" as male, and the ratification of the fifteenth amendment in 1870, which granted black men the right to vote, led to a temporary division in the suffragist movement. Stanton and Anthony created the more radical National Women's Suffrage Association in New York. In Boston, the more conservative American Women's Suffrage Association was created by Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe and Henry Blackwell.


With the proliferation of women's organizations such as the National Council of Jewish Women and the National Association of Colored Women the suffragist movement continued to gain steam throughout the 1880's and 1890's. During World War I the movement slowed as women focused their energies on the war effort. However, in 1919 years of dedication came to fruition as the Nineteenth Amendment was passed in both houses of Congress. In 1920 the Nineteenth Amendment, guaranteeing the right to vote to all citizens regardless of sex, was passed by President Woodrow Wilson.

And now, the Nineteen Pick Me Up!
1.75 oz Pastis
.75 oz Gin
dash Orange Bitters
dash Angostura Bitters
Sugar to taste
Shake and strain into a cocktail glass. (Splash of soda is optional)

Cheers!

Mother's Day Proclamation

From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe out dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...

- Julia Ward Howe
1870

Mother Cocktail
1.5 oz Dry Gin
.5 oz Cherry Heering
.5 oz Orange Juice
Shake over ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

Operation Frontline Dinner and Petticoat Row

Thank you to all who attended the tenth annual Operation Frontline Dinner at Tremont 647 last week! Also a huge thank you to Matt Lambo and Triple Eight Distillery for donating the delicious Triple Eight Cranberry Vodka that the ladies of LUPEC used to make the Petticoat Row! If you weren't able to attend, but are interested in our newest cocktail creation here's the recipe and the history of the name!

LUPEC Boston's Petticoat Row

2 parts Triple Eight Cranberry Vodka
1 part Fresh Orange Juice
1 part Spiced Simple Syrup*
Chill the above mixture in a shaker with ice. Strain into a flute, filling the flute halfway. Fill the flute with Prosecco and enjoy!

The Petticoat Row is named after the shops located along Centre Street on Nantucket. This area acquired it's nickname in the 19th Century when, while most women were mothers and homemakers, the majority of these shops were owned and operated by the wives of whalers who would be at sea for years at a time. Cheers to our forebroads of Nantucket!

Spiced Simple Syrup
Place one cup of water, 12 whole cloves, 1 or 2 star anise, and 1/8th teaspoon ground cinnamon in a small saucepan and stir to combine. Bring to a gentle boil over medium-high heat. Reduce the heat and simmer for 2 minutes. Add 2 cups sugar and simmer until the sugar is completely dissolved and the syrup is slightly thickened, about 2 minutes more.
Remove from the heat and let cool. Remove the cloves and star anise with a slotted spoon. Syrup will keep for up to four weeks when refrigerated.
Recipe from "Raising the Bar"by Nick Mautone

The 35th Boston Marathon for Ladies

Begun in 1897, the Boston Marathon is the world's oldest annual marathon and ranks as one of the world's most prestigious road racing events.

In 1967, Kathrine Switzer, who had registered as "K. V. Switzer", was the first woman to run with a race number. She was a 20- year-old Syracuse University junior who wanted to prove to herself and her coach she was capable of running 26.2 miles. But Switzer took steps no one woman had taken before to run Boston. Unlike other women who had completed the world's oldest and most prestigious marathon, Switzer had been so brash as to officially enter the race.

Switzer never told Boston Athletic Association officials she was a woman; the race application didn't ask. In those days, the BAA assumed everyone entering its grueling event was a man. But on that cold day at the starting line in Hopkinton, Mass., Switzer's coach, Arnie Briggs, picked up her race number and she pinned it on her hooded sweatshirt.

About three miles into the race, the press truck caught up to Switzer, who was running with Briggs and her boyfriend, Tom Miller. When the photographers noticed a woman in the race with an official number, the cameras started to click. And something clicked inside a BAA official, Jock Semple (one of the race's top competitors during the 1930s), who jumped off the truck and ran at Switzer in an attempt to tear off her number, yelling at her to stop in the name of the sanctity of the Boston Marathon.

Dazed and frightened she would be pulled off the course at any moment, Switzer managed to finish between four and five hours -- no one was quite sure of her time. She wore no watch and by the time she finished, all the officials had left. Bobbi Gibb, a woman who ran the race without an official number, finished about an hour ahead of her. But it was Switzer who had made headlines the next day with dramatic photos of her encounter with Semple.

The BAA allowed women to officially enter the race in 1972. From 1970 to 1976, Switzer competed at Boston six times, finishing second in '75 in 2:51:37. In 1996 the BAA retrospectively recognized as champions the unofficial women's leaders of 1966 through 1971. Bobbi Gibb was recognized as the first woman to run the entire Boston Marathon.

Congratulations to this year's winner, Lidiya Grigoryeva!

Photo Finish
- 1 oz Carioca Rum
- 1/2 oz Curacao
- juice 1/2 lime
- ice
- shake well. strain over cracked ice in an old-fashioned glass. garnish with lime peel.

Anne Whitney

Revered poet and sculptor, Anne Whitney was a passionate opponent of slavery and advocate for women's rights. Using her art to reflect her political beliefs, Whitney sculpted the busts of many suffragists and abolitionists including Lucy Stone, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Frances Willard.

In 1875 Whitney was commissioned for a statue of Samuel Adams which was contributed to the national capitol building by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Shortly thereafter she won first place for a commission for a memorial for William Sumner. Entries for the commission had been anonymous. Upon learning that the winner was a woman, the judges denied Whitney the commission. Having been an ardent supporter of Sumner's political campaign against slavery, Whitney decided to complete the statue using personal funds and contributions from friends. At the age of 80 she completed the statue and donated it to the city of Cambridge. The statue is now located outside Harvard Law School on an island at the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Church Street.

Queen Anne
1.5 oz Bourbon
.75 oz Dry Vermouth
.75 oz Pineapple Juice
2 dashes Peach Bitters
Shake and Strain

Don't Spoil a Good Story By Telling the Truth

At a time when Boston was being run by the descendants of the Puritans, Isabella Stewart Gardner was known for stylish and eccentric tastes. Sporting the latest in Paris and New York fashions, this philanthropic patron of the arts was full of surprises-such as the time she persuaded the Boston Zoo to loan her two lion cubs which she proudly walked up and down Commonwealth Avenue!

Born April 14, 1840 in New York City, Isabella Stewart Gardner was educated in private schools in New York and Paris. A friendship with her schoolmate Julia Gardner led to her marriage of John ("Jack") Lowell Gardner, Jr., Julia's older brother. After their wedding they moved to Jack's hometown of Boston, settling into their residence on Beacon Street in the Back By which had been a wedding gift from Jack's father. In June 1863, Isabella gave birth to a son, John L Gardner III, known as "Jackie." Unfortunately, at the age of two, Jackie died of pneumonia sending Isabella into a period of depression and illness.

In 1874, Isabella and Jack became parents to Jack's three orphaned nephews. Isabella took an intense interest in their rigorous studies and realized her own schooling was lacking. She began reading and attending lectures at Harvard by art historian Charles Elliot Norton. Throughout the 1870's and late 1880's, Isabella and Jack frequently traveled through America, Europe and Asia to expand their knowledge of foreign cultures and art throughout the world. It is during this time that she began collecting works of art.

Back in Boston, Isabella was an avid entertainer and a frequent patron of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Known for her dinner parties and salons in her Back Bay home, Isabella hosted the likes of author Henry James, writer Sarah Orne Jewett, philosopher George Santayana and writer of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, Julia Ward Howe, as well as friends and artists like John Singer Sargent. Isabella was a sports enthusiast as well, supporting the Boston Red Sox and the Harvard football and hockey teams.

Upon the death of her husband, Isabella began work on her museum. Completed in 1903, the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum was built in the style of the Renaissance palaces of Venice in the reclaimed swamplands of Boston's Fenway area. Upon her death in 1924 she willed Fenway Court to the city of Boston as a public museum to be preserved without change. Her will created an endowment of $1 million and strict stipulations as to the maintenance of the museum. In keeping with her philanthropic nature, she also left sizable donations to the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, Industrial School for Crippled and Deformed Children, Animal Rescue League and Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

At a time when Puritanical tendencies remained and Boston women were expected to live in a matronly Victorian manner, Isabella Stewart Gardner lived an exuberant life. This, of course, made her the focus of the local press and the rumor mill alike. Keeping with her carefree spirit, Isabella responded to the stories of her escapades with her typical sense of humor saying, "Don't spoil a good story by telling the truth."

The New Woman

"The bicycle has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world."
- Susan B Anthony

On June 25, 1894 Annie Cohen Kopchovsky stood before a crowd of suffragists, supporters and curious onlookers in front of the Massachusetts State House and declared that she would cycle around the world. Leaving her three children behind, Annie hopped on her 42 pound Columbia bicycle carrying nothing but a change of underwear and a pearl-handled revolver to settle a bet between two Boston clubmen. Ten years earlier Thomas Steven had circled the globe on his bicycle riding 13,500 miles in 32 months and the bet was that no women could repeat his feat. The two wealthy clubmen wagered $20,000, as well as $10,000 to the woman who completed the ride. Having had only two short lessons on the bicycle, Annie set off to circle the globe in 15 months. The terms included that she start penniless and raise $5000 above her expenses during the course of her ride. On that June afternoon she earned her first $100 as a representative of New Hampshire's Londonderry Lithia Springs Water Company paid her to bear a placard and to take their name for the trip. Annie Londonderry then hopped on her bike and "sailed away like a kite down Beacon Street," according to the Boston Evening Transcript.

Annie Londonderry challanged all the Victorian notions of womanhood. She temporarily abandoned her roles of wife and mother in order to travel alone for fifteen months, most of the time wearing a man's riding suit while riding a man's bicycle. After successfully completing her ride, Annie moved her family to New York where she had a short career writing for the New York World with the byline of The New Woman. The story about her trip begins "I am a journalist and a 'new woman,' if that term means that I believe I can do anything that any man can do."