The Other Dianne

Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense. Gertrude Stein

The Other Dianne

Dianne Feinstein never lost her common sense, except towards the end of her life. But I'm skipping over that, because I can understand it. You've read about her as an outstanding woman, who accomplished so much, whose politics changed lives.

She interests me on another level, born in 1933,  this country was nowhere ready for a bright woman on the scene of government, even in progressive California, with a voice, determination, and a forceful will power. A woman who insisted on being heard.

What pushed her? What motivated her, where did it come from, what was her childhood like?  I was born years after her. So I want the gaps in her personal life filled. I want to know what she was thinking while I was learning how to line a garbage pail with newspaper and make cocoa from scratch.

I want to know about her early schooling, what influenced her, high school, boys, dating. I want to know more about her time at Stanford, a male bastion. How was she treated, what courses did she take?  Did she join a sorority?  How did she meet her three husbands? How did she mix politics, raising a daughter, keeping a marriage together, pursuing a very public life?  What was it like pushing against a glass ceiling before the words "glass ceiling" even existed?

I want to know all about the personal Dianne. I want to know how this extraordinary woman, in a time when women were seen as very ordinary, came to be the giant she was.

I'm waiting for a biography. 

Image: David Hume Kennerly, Stanford Magazine