Good morning everyone,

Let’s talk about Tsai Ing-Wen! She is Taiwan’s first female president, she supports marriage equality and she owns two cats. I can’t find any evidence online that she actually said this:

…but it still serves as jumping off point for today’s Fem Friday. If you want to know more about this cool woman, here is an article to enjoy:

“I sense that politics certainly doesn’t come naturally to her […] She very much enjoys sitting down with a glass of red wine, and reading a book and spending quality time with her cats.” […] In an interview with Time magazine in 2015, Tsai recalled how, as the youngest daughter, she was required to spend her idle hours caring for her entrepreneur father. “I was not considered a kid that would be successful in my career,” she said.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/15/tsai-ing-wen-former-professor-on-course-to-be-most-powerful-woman-in-chinese-speaking-world

Next, we turn to Simona Kossak, a woman who actually did buy a pig. She lived in the wilds of Poland and, as well as living with a large boar and a semi trained crow, she hand raised a pack of deer:

I crossed the border that divides the human world from that of the animals. If there was a glass that divided us from humans, a wall impossible to knock down, then the animals would not care about me. We are deer, she is human, what do we care for her? If they did warn me (…), it meant one thing and one thing only: you are a member of our pack, we don’t want you to get hurt. I honestly admit, I relived this event for many days, and in fact today, when I think about it, there is sense of warmth around my heart. It proves how one can befriend the world of wild animals.

http://culture.pl/en/article/the-extraordinary-life-of-simona-kossak

As you perhaps know, I am fascinated by Self Sufficiency, the hilariously self-aggrandising book on country life written by John Seymour and beautifully illustrated by his wife, Sally. Always an illustrator, she taught herself to draw with her left hand after a stroke in 2004, as well as facing various critter based challenges throughout her life:

In 1988 she went to Australia where she battled the elements, snakes, spiders and white ants and built up a smallholding on her own. She also established herself as an artist of some importance in a new country.

http://carninglipress.co.uk/biography-sally-seymour.php

Have a lovely weekend!

Alex.