There is no institutional policy to challenge, no human resources department to complain to.

The market discrimination that Mary Kenner faced was diffuse, informal, and extraordinarily difficult to fight.

The Flower Shop as Life Work

The tendency to treat Mary Kenner’s flower shop as merely a day job, as the economic necessity that funded her “real” work as an inventor, may not fully capture what the flower shop actually was in her life.

Running a successful small business is itself a significant achievement.

It requires knowledge, skill, customer service ability, business acumen, and the sustained capacity to manage the operational demands of a small enterprise over many years.