McGill Libraries
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Identity area
Type of entity
Person
Authorized form of name
North, Rusty, 1921-2010
Parallel form(s) of name
Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules
Other form(s) of name
Identifiers for corporate bodies
Description area
Dates of existence
1921-2010
History
Elizabeth Jane (Rusty) North was born on December 10, 1921, in Buffalo, New York.
She was an American poet, painter, and printer. She married a photographer John Livingston North ( -1974). Despite the loss of her right hand in a printing press accident, Rusty’s determination and courage enabled her to learn to write and paint with her left hand and to raise her five children. She was a dedicated pacifist who actively engaged together with her husband in antiwar and civil rights demonstrations during the 1950s and early 1970s. In 1970, they settled in Port Townsend, Washington, where they joined the Port Townsend Worship Group. In 1983, she joined University Friends Meeting and in 2002, she became a founding member of the new Port Townsend Friends Meeting. Rusty served on several Meeting committees, including the Committee for Peace and Social Concerns. Under the name "Sagittarius Press" Rusty also published her own poetry and that of others in small chapbooks on a hand-operated letter-set press. She returned to school and received a graduate degree in psychology from Antioch University when she was 60. She published books of poems "Port Townsend poems" (1976), "Christmas Past (1977), "Little Old Lady in Tennis Shoes" (1990) and "Fog" (1992).
She died on September 12, 2010, in Port Townsend, Washington.