NPR digs into Hillary's hidden past

[ucrdem]

and finds some awesome photos:

Growing Up In Protected Americana, Hillary Clinton Looked Outside The Cocoon
JUNE 16, 2015 4:22 PM ET

Hillary Rodham also sent a letter to NASA, hoping to become an astronaut and got a letter back saying girls need not apply. But the fact that she even tried says something about the Park Ridge state of mind and the way Rodham was raised. Girls assumed they would go to college. And everyone was encouraged by teachers and pastors to look outside the cocoon of the suburbs, said Price.



http://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/06/16/413927185/growing-up-in-protected-americana-hillary-clinton-looked-outside-the-cocoon

[BainsBane]

1. No, that can't be right

I learned on the internet that she grew up here.

[ucrdem]

2. LOL, that's the summer cottage

where she spent many happy summers dressing as a shepherdess and playing populist . . .

Incidentally it seems she's been at this game for some time:

. . . The president was always a boy and the secretary was always a girl," she said.

A young Hillary Rodham tried to change that, her friends say, not to make some big political or feminist statement but because she thought she could. Her good friend Betsy Ebeling says Rodham ran for student council president, and lost.

"I was her campaign manager," she said. "So I advised her — that probably, that one didn't turn out so well."

Third time's the charm!

[cali]

3. really? please link to anything on.du or elsewhere

that claims that she grew up in great wealth

[Bonobo]

4. No but in Park Ridge there wasn't a minority

For miles and miles.

[Divernan]

5. Part of NPR series on each presidential candidate.

This story is part of NPR's series Journey Home. We're going to the places presidential candidates call home and finding out what those places tell us about how they see the world.

Hillary Clinton's family moved to Park Ridge, Ill. in 1950 when she was a toddler. It's a quiet, upper middle class suburb of Chicago. . . Hugh Rodham paid for his family's home outright, with money he had saved as the owner of a drapery business. The house is on the corner. It's brick, two stories tall under big shade trees. . . an affluent midwestern suburb.

There were games of baseball played in the middle of the street. The sewer covers served as the bases. Kids would ride off on their bikes and no one started worrying until after dark.Think growing up in a Norman Rockwell painting.

Interesting - I'd always thought of her as coming from a middle class background - but this neighborhood is definitely, as the report says, upper middle class. I grew up in a similar house in a small town outside of Chicago - the mothers all had domestic "help" several days a week - to do the washing, ironing and major housecleaning, i.e., scrubbing out the multiple bathrooms, polishing the hardwood floors, vacuuming, & dusting. My Mom prepared 3 hot meals a day (we walked home from school for lunch) and played a lot of bridge. Our maid taught me how to iron before I left for college. It was a very cushioned, sheltered, safe life. We never locked our house - day or night.

[NightWatcher]

6. Just don't let Diane Rehm look into her past

She'll report some batshit craziness that she found while "researching" on facebook.

[Hekate]

7. Awesome about NASA. By the time my little sister went to Berkeley it was almost a realistic dream...

....for a girl, and I remember her talking about wanting to be an astronaut.

It really sounds like Hillary had a wonderful upbringing, one that propelled her into a life of public service and gave her the tools to succeed at it. I wish all kids could have those opportunities -- I'm glad she did.