IN THE PINK, January 2025

A year ago this month, I posted my first PINK THREAD on Substack. An almost anniversary prompts this stake-holder report, assessing the first eleven months of this enterprise.

In 2024, I wrote 69 essays, fifty-two PINK THREADS and seventeen LOOSE ENDS, an average of six per month.

Substack sent the early essays to 913 addresses, the names of everyone in my contact list: relatives, friends, former classmates, colleagues and students, people I met at parties, on elevators, at book signings and in audiences to whom I’d spoken. Some of them might not have remembered who Elisabeth Griffith was and deleted my PINKS immediately. Or they languished in spam or junk files.

As of December 31. 2024, I had 1555 free and 118 paid subscribers, a total of 1673.

Depending on the topic and on how widely readers share my PINKS, those numbers vary. Within 24-hours of any PINK post, Substack sends me “first day views” data, the number of people who opened each essay and whether they subsequently became a paid subscriber or cancelled their subscription. Indeed, as soon as anyone becomes free or paid subscriber or drops a subscription, I get an email. I know, for example, that one high school girlfriend, for whom I was a bridesmaid in hot pink, has unsubscribed.

On average, 1458 people have opened each PINK THREAD and 1362 have opened LOOSE ENDS.

These TOP TEN PINK FAVORITES attracted between 3125 and 1564 readers, more than those averages.

1. The Equal Credit Act 3125

2. Tampons 2067

3. Nancy Drew 2019

4. Cat Ladies 2014

5. Barbie 1812

6. Memorial Day 1756

7. Margaret Chase Smith 1731

8. Roe v. Wade 1728

9. Black History Month 1612

10. Spelman College/HBCUs 1564

Three PINKS had significantly lower readership:

1. Immigration 1079

2. Seneca Falls 1179

3. Mother’s Day/M. Sanger 1183

It’s hard to identify connecting themes. Each topic was based on an historic or current event, often both. That the 1974 Equal Credit Act attracted 1058 more readers than the next most popular topic suggests that its co-sponsors, Congresswomen Lindy Boggs (D-LA) and Margaret Heckler (R-MA), were correct: “Women vote with their pocketbooks.”

Readership does not relate to essay length, which ranged among the top ten from 1544 to 1026 words (not counting titles, captions or sources), because a reader would have to open the post to be counted. When I mention that I’m trying to be more concise, readers respond that length does not matter, they want “the rest of the story.”

I wondered if opening a PINK THREAD depended on the day of the week (three Thursdays, three weekends, no Wednesdays), but the data set is too small. I worried if publishing PINKS too frequently annoyed or overwhelmed readers, but essays about Memorial Day (5.30) and Margaret Chase Smith’s “Declaration of Conscience” (6.1) appeared almost back-to-back.

Did the least read PINKS not appeal because readers were disinterested or felt they had “been there, done that”? I hope you’ll tell me.

Substack does not track readership by gender, race, ethnicity, education, religion or age, as exit polls track voters. Based on reader responses and comments, there’s evidence of the same diversity as my topics. Many readers are women but, based on reader comments, PINK THREADS has male readers too.

Substack does provide data about reader location:

28% Washington, DC (where I live)

10% New York

9% California

6% New Jersey

5% Texas (so not all blue states)

Also, 17% of PINK readers subscribe to Heather Cox Richardson’s LETTER FROM AN AMERICAN and 7% read CIVIL DISCOURSE by Joyce Vance. I’m delighted to be in their company, especially since I aspire to be the Heather Cox Richardson of women’s history.

Richardson writes a daily 1000-word essay about politics and history. Starting on Facebook in 2019, she has acquired 1.8 million subscribers, making her Substack’s most successful and highest earning author.

As her followers know, she is a tenured professor at Boston College, specializing in the Civil War and Reconstruction, and the author of seven books, most recently Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America (2023), all while commuting to Maine where she lives with her husband of three years, lobsterman Buddy Poland.

PINK THREADS have benefitted from several specific boosters. Novelist Elizabeth Winthrop (TABLE OF CONTENTS) urged me to “just do it” and continues to answer questions on all things Substack. I highly recommend her children’s books and memoir, Daughter of Spies. Since not even my tech-savvy kids could figure out all Substack’s nooks and nuances, I turned to expert Jeff Dayton to launch this mission. He figured out how to import all those email addresses. Peter Osnos (PLATFORM), who was my editor at Random House years ago, for a book about the Equal Rights Amendment I never wrote, has recommended PINK THREADS to many readers, as has historian Richard Bluttal (MAKE HISTORY COME ALIVE).

My daughter Megan designed the PINK THREADS quilt logo. I’ve learned that Ken Burns’ collection of over 100 quilts have been exhibited in museums and that Frank Sinatra made paintings of quilts. (Below: “Red and Blue Star”)

I’m pleased that my quilt metaphor has not worn thin, although there have been days when I may have lost the thread. I do think of history as a colorful tapestry. In Composing a Life (1991), Catherine Bateson, Margaret Meade’s daughter, suggests that in hindsight our lives look like quilts, in which scraps and remnants of experience become a richly patterned whole.

As I explained when I introduced PINK THREADS, using allusions to stitching, mending, knitting and weaving, centers women in our national narrative. Women have pulled the threads that connected communities. In myths and literature, they have controlled fate. An emphasis on fabric also acknowledged the impact of the cotton industry on enslaved and free labor, the global economy and the legacy of racism.

In October 2023, archeologists in Spain found baskets woven with sophisticated craftsmanship, made by Mesolithic hunter-gatherers 9,500 years ago. Every culture has depended on weavers.

In the summer of 2023, I began sending sample essays to sundry friends and family. I imagined the task would be like answering a timed essay question, a quick 1,000-word column, expanding on stories I’d had to abbreviate in FORMIDABLE. Ha. My PINKS are more time- consuming, and longer, than I anticipated. Once I start pulling on a thread, I learn more and I want to share those stories with you. Historians always want to add one more fact or footnote.

My current plan is to carry on, writing four or more PINKS a month, plus or minus a LOOSE END. I won’t run out of topics. I may write more about women artists and authors or include some book reviews. For example, I recently learned that French-American artist Louise Bourgeois called her thirty-foot-high sculpture of a spider Maman, in honor of her mother. Like a spider, her mother was a weaver, part of the family’s tapestry restoration business. “I have always had a fear of being separated and abandoned,” wrote the artist. “Sewing is my attempt to keep things together and make things whole.”

Members of a book group recommended The Thread Collectors (2022) by Shaunna Edwards and Alyson Richman. The novel weaves together the lives of a Black woman in New Orleans and a Jewish woman in New York City during the Civil War. One embroiders maps to help enslaved men flee North; the other rolls bandages and makes quilts for Union soldiers. Their lives become entangled.

Meanwhile, I have another book in mind.

I’m grateful to all of you who read, share, subscribe and respond to PINK THREADS. Thank you!

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