Welcome to Stuff You missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V.
Wilson.
And we talked about Wanda Gog all week. Yeah. You know what we did not talk about Regarding Wanda gog A lot of her friends kind of talk trash about her. Oh really, They were like, she was really selfish and kind of hard to be around. And I'm like, oh, that would explain why there aren't a lot of friends in her picture a lot of the time. Yeah, although
her siblings remained very close to her. Her her youngest sibling, Flavia, spent a lot of time with Wanda throughout her life, often staying at her house, and her other siblings would often stay there as well. I have questions.
Yes, So, based on her life story, it seems like from a really early age she was trying so hard to financially hold her family together.
Yeah.
So the characterization of her is selfish. Like, I get it. I get how a person can be in a friend context coming off as selfish or maybe self centered, right, But it's and I it's in some ways seems at odds with this idea of like having really tried from her teens to try to keep the family afloat. But also part of me is like I feel like if I were in that situation, and I were from my teenage years meticulously tracking my money to try to keep my family fed, I might as an adult be a
little selfish. Yeah, I would be self indulgent as hell.
I mean, I think part of it probably is actually that she lived for no one else but Wanda Dog, do you know what I mean? Like her desires were her primary priority, which I think is fine and great. Like she didn't do a lot of like well, would so and so be unhappy if I do? It'd be like, this is what I want to do, this is what
I'm going to do. And I think on top of that, the fact that she was pretty conceited about her artistic talent probably rubbed people the wrong way, but they just put it that way, so instead they said she was selfish, do you know what I mean? Because that would be like admitting that they didn't they weren't on even footing in terms of art career. There's a fun factoid that I saw on a video that is on the website for the Wandagogue house, and it is a weird numerology thing,
but it's fascinating. It is the importance or the constant recurrence of the number seven in her father and mother's lives. The house was originally painted with seven different colors when he built it would when he only had the one child, not seven. It has seven different window shapes, it has seven rooms, and then they had seven children, and then both Anton and Lissie died when they were forty nine years old, which is seven squared. It's just weird. I
don't think it means anything. I don't I'm just saying it's interesting. I love it. But speaking of her parents, there's a thing we mentioned that Wanda was perceived by her friends as being kind of Victorian in her social values. And one thing we didn't talk about in the show, and in part because I feel like it's a thing that's a little hard to pick apart, is that I think she had some early experiences with people drinking that she did not like. Okay, apparently after her father died.
You know, we talk about how the kids are all doing all the work to support the family, and her mom really wasn't and she was physically ill, but it seems like also she may have had a problem with alcohol misuse at the end of her life, because she had been prescribed by a doctor at some point to drink beer to help calm her nerves, and it seems
like that escalated. And so I feel like Wanda would never speak ill of her mother, but it seems like that impacted her perception of drinking and alcohol use and
she didn't want any part of it. And one of the reasons that she and Earl, one of the reasons she wanted to move from a house they had been in in the country for several years, was that they had a neighbor that would come over and drink with Earl, and she didn't like him drinking either, and that was part of what precipitated her being like, we should move,
which is just interesting. I don't think she ever I read her younger year diaries, and I read a lot of her other writing, but I never saw, and it could be in there somewhere anything that specifically said like, hey, I saw people drinking and that was horrible and I didn't like it. So I didn't want any part of it. But she never was a drinker at all, Like I think she just associated it with not good things and painfulness,
which is kind of interesting. She also there are a couple of things about her personal health that I did not include. She did, at least one time in her life terminate a pregnancy, which is pretty open about in her diary. She also had a lot of issues with her period throughout her life, which was another thing that she would try to describe to doctors and they would
be like, you need rest. But they were bad enough that when she would get her period, it would be extremely painful for several days, and it was bad enough that she had to structure her life around like I need to have those days off because I can't do anything right. Like she was basically bedridden because it was so painful it was hard to move. But I will say that she called her period by a funny name, much like vacation is a funny name for open relationship. Okay,
she called her period hallelujah. Okay, I don't know if that's something she started calling it. Yeah, because she was having some sexual alliances. Okay. I can't imagine another reason you would know it that, especially if but pain right, Yeah.
We have made some progress as a society in terms of women's health. Yeah, but like, as an example sample, my mom has a progressive neurological disorder that she spent so many years going to doctors and specialists and having them tell her it was just stress.
Yeah, it's not.
Her neurons are being actively damaged in her body.
Right. Yeah, that happens a lot. I mean, I am not to be too overshary about personal stuff, but right, you remember, at the beginning of last year, I was having don't anybody be scared, I'm fine. I was having chest pain, which my doctor kept telling me was because I was eating spicy food, even though I was like I don't know how to eat spicy food. I could. I will eat all the butter, but I can't really do spices. I can never tolerate them. I don't know
what's going on. And it turned out that I had like a big old gallstone launched in the duct between my gallbladder and my stomach, and like for it was like, you know, you're just I think it's spicy food and stress and you're not drinking too much coffee and not taking care of yourself. And like there was a week where I wasn't allowed to eat because we were trying to like get all of the stuff out of my system,
and it was like it didn't get any better. Yeah, until I was in the er and they were like, oh girl, that's not what's up right, right.
I remember the extended misery of like trying to avoid coffee during all of that, and then you had your gallbladder out and it was like everything result, everything was fine instantly, fine felt great after that.
Yeah, it was. It's kind of funny. We're not there yet, and I'm sure some of it is just right, like some.
Of it's the system and it applies to everyone, but there are disproportionate things that affect everyone who's not a man.
Yeah. I mean I feel like too a lot of the times, because menopause has not been studied all that much, right compared to other things. It's not to say that there haven't been any, but when you say something sometimes they'll just be like, oh, that's probably menopause, or I don't know, maybe is this menopause. I don't know, maybe, and so it can get really frustrating. So it doesn't surprise me that she was going to doctors and going
I think I'm starting menopause. I think it's giving me problems, and they were like, probably not something in my chest hurt. Since she was like, they were like, you need to lie down. Yeah. Yeah.
I've had multiple conversations with people in my friend group about perimenopause specifically and how everything we know about it we have learned from each other and not from doctors. Yeah, and you'll go to the doctor and have like the similar situation of like, I'm having these things happen and they're like, yeah, maybe maybe maybe you know, I feel like I have a doctor that does listen to me and does like and we'll order tests to try, but it still is like we don't really for sure know
why this is happening. All of the tests are normal, maybe perimenopause maybe.
Yeah, And I will say this is like my moment to do a little PSA. I know that healthcare is not available to everyone, but if you can, and if you have access, and if you are able to, please get all of your baseline screenings done as often as you possibly can on your yearly or whatever schedule, because it's when you have that in place it's easier to
see the variations that indicate something else is wrong. Yeah, I know it sucks, but please do it and take care of yourself because you're the only one we have.
And I will also add to this that, like, I know, it can be really hard for a number of reasons to stay on top of the things that your doctor has asked you to do. But for example, I would not know that I needed an increase in my blood pressure medicine had I not been trying to take my blood pressure at home three times times a week, like my doctor asked.
Yeah, I mean that stuff is really important, especially as you kind of hit our age, you know, as the world becomes progressively more chaotic, and possibly the increased stress in your life is making your blood pressure significantly higher. Yeah. Yeah.
We mentioned in the course of the episode, when Earle and her brother decided not to tell her she had advanced stage cancer, that it was not entirely unheard of for that to be the case, even though she and her diary is like they're giving me X ray therapy.
I'm pretty sure this is cancer not uncommon. Hard to hear that, you know, in our age where we are a little more aware of conscious of often discussing the ideas of bodily autonomy, and it's easy to want to condemn that choice, But I don't think that didn't feel especially out of hand given time and place, right, right, and because Earle was obviously really devoted to her at the end of her life, you know, he did basically put aside everything he had going on to take care
of her. Yeah. Yeah, so, but it's also weird.
Yeah, by the time these episodes come out, we will have had a Saturday Classic about George Wallace, who we have a similar story in that episode regarding his wife and a cancer diagnosis that she wasn't informed of. It
is by coincidence that that is how this is lining up. Yeah, I mean, I feel like I also was thinking of in the recent Vonnegut episode, we mentioned that when his sister was very ill in the hospital with cancer, they didn't want to tell her that her husband had died, right, which you know, she found out by accident and it was horrible.
And I don't, I don't know. That's a hard choice to make, and I don't I don't want to dog anybody as stealing someone's autonomy when I know in these cases it's not like they're hiding something from someone to try to do something devious. They're trying not to hurt them worse. But I don't I'm not equipped to make
those decisions for other people, So I don't know. But I did think it would be a little more joyous to end this one by talking about what Wanda Gog throughout her life listed as her three passions, and they were, obviously, unsurprisingly to anyone. Art yep, sex yep, and growing things. Okay, she loved gardens.
I love that.
Yeah. I find it funny that she thought the books that made her most famous were kind of like, I'm just doing this, I have money to make art. That kind of tickles me a little bit. I love it. I kind of love her. She's she's wild. I can't imagine being as confident as her now. She just had no hesitation about how great she thought she was, which is wonderful but not something I can identify with. So, oh, Wanda,
please give us strength and these times going forward. If this is your weekend coming up, I hope that you can invoke a little bit about of that Wanda Gog spirit and advocate for yourself and be confident in yourself and know that you are very good at some stuff in your life, and that you know you should. You should be able to make your own decisions and follow follow your your own conscience as to what is best.
I also hope everything goes smoothly for you and that people are nice to you, and that you are nice to people in return. We got to take care of our and each other. If you have medical things and you can get them screened, please get them screened. Do it for me, Tell your doctor, Holly said. So we will be right back here tomorrow with a classic episode and then on Monday with something brand new. Stuff you missed in.
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