Test Tube Babies: Mystery

I came across an on-line obituary for Gage Bush Englund, Birmingham native and famous ballerina and ballet mistress, who died in 2009. I remembered Gage Bush, who was a couple of years older than me. She had polio as a child and avoided being handicapped through ballet training, and I remember someone saying she was a "test tube baby," i.e., conceived by in vitro fertilization. Then I Googled "test tube baby," and found that a woman in England was the first one, born in 1978. If the story about Gage was just a rumor, at least the term was well-known before 1978, because it was probably before 1950 that I heard about it.

Maybe all scientific breakthroughs or "firsts" have to occur in either England or Russia. Certainly not in Birmingham, Alabama.

I have to get cracking, to get to a writing workshop at the Presbyterian church at ten a.m.

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1:45 p.m.
The workshop was conducted by Joan Dawson and Beverly Radford of UAB, and it was really interesting. The lunch was delicious. Lots of cool folks were there: Mable, Sherry, Grady Sue, Spurgeon M., DeWitt S., Mary Anne, Doris, Frank--and many that I didn't know before but do now. At the end of the meeting, they gave us these certificates.