FQ1: If you were able to visit any time period in the past, when would it be? What is it about this particular point in history that appeals to you?
There aren't any places in History that fare well for women. Often thought of as chatils, counted as assets with the livestock - a woman's lot up until recent history was a pretty raw deal. Our first communities reveal female skeletons with deformed toes and worn knee bones from relentless hours on hands and knees grinding corn for flour - a position which also leaves arse up for rape and plunder by any horny male in goatskin who happened past; to heamoraging 15 year olds dying in childbirth trying to give men and kings sons and heirs. Producing daughters was and is still, in some countries, an utter failure to duty. Having no voice and often little education, tying oneself to parliment railings or throwing one's body in front of horses to be seen as a person in society was what the Suffragettes had to do to start the wheel of change moving faster than it had been going at that point. Being a woman up until recent history has *sucked*.
Education too seemed to be something a man needed more than a woman. Why would a woman need to learn about history or physics or literature when all she really needed was a nice pair of white gloves and a spotless reputation to snag the "right man". He would then take care of her the rest of her days while she produced his 2.5 children and ironed his pants so he could have sharp creases as he surveyed his quarter acre kingdom. Even going back as little as 20 years sees discrimination holding many women back from jobs they were well able to do and succeed in.
New Zealand and now is the best place and time to be a woman.
FQ2: If you could meet any person from throughout history, who would that be? What makes them so special to you?
Leonado daVinci beats Albert Einstien by a gnat's whisker. The Genius of Proving Concepts. The Man who's mind raced far ahead of his own chalk and who's works of art may be few, but some of the very best examples of technique and metaphor and downright God given talent.
His talents lay thick and solid against so many disciplines: art and science, politics and warcraft, music and language. What that man couldn't do wasn't worth doing.
FQ3: If you could reach through time and grab a piece of historical memorabilia, what artifact would you take and what would you do with it?
I would reach back in time and stop the scribes from sealing the Dead Sea Scrolls into their earthen containers and bring them forward to today, fully intact, the ink still wet. Mind you, thinking about it, isn't it the translation that is half the battle besides the fragmentation and disintigration of the parchment? We need to drag a couple of those scribes through the portal too.
I'm completely sick of the heresay and translation of the thing we call the Bible - never mind the Old Testament but how about we just grab a couple of key figures from Jesus' time and yoink them to the future and find out exactly what the hell was going on. Has a whole slew of religions and half the planet based it's beliefs on the Son of God or a rebellious upstart and his gang of ratbags who wanted to change the system?
FQ Quantum Leap: You have been given a one-time-only opportunity to travel back in time and interfere with history! Would you do it? Where would you go and what would you try to change?
So many points in time a good person would touch to ease suffering and end wars before they began. Who wouldn't want to go back and stop Adolf Hitler if they could? The Spanish Inquisition? Gengis Khan? But I'm not that good a person, so the point of history I interfere with is December 8th, 1980 and stop the murder of John Lennon.
Yes because it was such a waste, and yes because no son deserves to lose his father and yes because senseless violence seems even more attrocious when committed against such a creative, influential being.
But mostly I would love John Lennon to be alive today to verbally slap Paul McCartney in the chops for the things he's been saying about their creative collaboration. Bragging that it was McCartney's creative domination over Lennon that was the reason for their great successes as a songwriting team. That it was Paul over John who made Beatles what the gigantic musical influence they through the 60s and 70s and beyond. What would John have to say if Paul were brave enough to demand "Lennon and McCartney" credits be reversed and Pauls name appear first? He probably wouldn't give a shit, quite frankly, and Paul wouldn't have the moxy to suggest it if his former partner wasn't long dead.