Anne Bradstreet

Today’s AWU WOD is Anne Bradstreet (born 1612 Northampton England- Sept. 16, 1672) She was America’s first published poet. She was born the daughter of a steward to the Earl of Lincoln, she was raised with private tutors and unlimited access to the Earl's private library -- a rarity for women of her time. Two years after marrying her father's assistant, Simon Bradstreet, Anne sailed to the New World with her family in 1630.

She was restricted by the gender roles of her day. She was confined during her eight pregnancies because she was often afflicted with illness and fever. She had been afflicted with smallpox, and as she grew older paralysis overtook her joints. She was alone as her husband travelled, negotiating the business of the new colonies. During the many lonely hours that she endured, Anne had a lot of time to think – and to write. Anne was especially fond of poetry, which she had begun to write herself; her works were kept private though, as it was frowned upon for women to pursue intellectual enlightenment, let alone create and air their views and opinions. She wrote for herself, her family, and close circle of educated friends, and did not intend on publication. One of her closest friends, Anne Hutchinson, who was also a religious and educated woman had made the mistake of airing her views publicly, and was banished from her community.

However, Anne's work would not remain unnoticed. Her brother-in-law, John Woodbridge, had secretly copied Anne's work, and would later bring it to England to have it published, albeit without her permission. Woodbridge even admitted to it in the preface of her first collection, "The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America, By a Gentlewoman of Those Parts", which was published in 1650. The book did fairly well in England, and was to be the last of her poetry to be published during her lifetime. All her other poems were published posthumously.

As weary pilgrim, now at rest

As weary pilgrim, now at rest,
Hugs with delight his silent nest
His wasted limbes, now lye full soft
That myrie steps, haue troden oft
Blesses himself, to think vpon
his dangers past, and travailes done
The burning sun no more shall heat
Nor stormy raines, on him shall beat.
The bryars and thornes no more shall scratch
nor hungry wolues at him shall catch
He erring pathes no more shall tread
nor wild fruits eate, in stead of bread,
for waters cold he doth not long
for thirst no more shall parch his tongue
No rugged stones his feet shall gaule
nor stumps nor rocks cause him to fall
All cares and feares, he bids farwell
and meanes in safity now to dwell.
A pilgrim I, on earth, perplext
wth sinns wth cares and sorrows vext
By age and paines brought to decay
and my Clay house mouldring away
Oh how I long to be at rest
and soare on high among the blest.
This body shall in silence sleep
Mine eyes no more shall ever weep
No fainting fits shall me assaile
nor grinding paines my body fraile
Wth cares and fears ne'r cumbred be
Nor losses know, nor sorrowes see
What tho my flesh shall there consume
it is the bed Christ did perfume
And when a few yeares shall be gone
this mortall shall be cloth'd vpon
A Corrupt Carcasse downe it lyes
a glorious body it shall rise
In weaknes and dishonour sowne
in power 'tis rais'd by Christ alone
Then soule and body shall vnite
and of their maker haue the sight
Such lasting ioyes shall there behold
as eare ne'r heard nor tongue e'er told
Lord make me ready for that day
then Come deare bridgrome Come away.

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Harriet Tubman

Today's AWOD is Harriet Tubman, an American icon and one of the most famous civilians in American history before the Civil War. She inspired generations of African Americans struggling for equality and civil rights as an African-American abolitionist, humanitarian, and Union spy during the American Civil War.


A runaway slave from Maryland. she became known as the "Moses of her people." Over the course of 10 years, and at great personal risk, she led hundreds of slaves to freedom along the Underground Railroad, a secret network of safe houses where runaway slaves could stay on their journey north to freedom. It's estimated she brought 200-300 slaves to freedom. Her dangerous journeys required her to travel by night, during which she guided herself by the North Star, avoiding the careful eyes of "slavecatchers", eager to collect rewards for fugitive slaves.


Tubman later went on to promote the cause of women's suffrage and traveled extensively to speak out in favor of women's voting rights.
http://www.harriettubman.com/

The Barefoot Solar Engineers of Africa

The Awesome Women of the Day are the "Barefoot Solar Engineers", women who left their African villages to spend six months at Barefoot University in India learning to create solar energy installations to power their villages. They brought their skills home, electrified their villages, and share their knowledge with others.





From the video narration:

This is about simple women in Africa who have made an extraordinary difference to their own communities, from Ethiopia to the Gambi, from Mauritania to Tanzania, a quiet revolution is taking place. Illiterate & semi-literate women, most of them grandmothers who have never left their villages in their lives, let alone going to another country several thousand miles away, they are making the impossible possible. They are baffling high-powered engineers, universities, donors, development planners and qualified experts by demonstrating incredible sophisticated skills and exposing the fundamental inadequacies of the formal educational system.

And a special shout-out to the woman who birthed and raised Sanjit “Bunker” Roy -- a man who recognizes that the best candidates for his project are women because of their superior patience and natural motivation to share what they have learned with their communities. Roy's Barefoot College has trained more than 3 million people for jobs in a bottom-up, social entrepreneurship approach to fight poverty and deprivation.

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Lah Tere

Lah Tere (born Teresita Ayala) is a humanitarian, activist female emcee, songstress and a visionary speaker for the 21st century. The AfroAntillian / Puerto Rican / Boricua sister grew up in Chicago’s historic P.R. diasporic community of Humboldt Park near the famed Paseo Boricua. She is a first-generation born in the mainland, and the daughter of revolutionary educators and survivors of Chicago’s notorious ghettos.

Lah Tere integrates bilingual lyrics over hard-hitting beats with crunk, Caribbean, and world music influences. She uses hip hop as her weapon to speak against injustices in Black and Latino communities.

Lah is a founding member of Rebel Diaz, an international rap group that takes a critical and political stance on many social issues from police brutality on the streets of New York to violence against women globally.

The Chi-town native and her group of Latin rappers seek to unify black and brown people through their African-, Latin- and hip-hop-inspired grooves. Lah Tere provides powerfully soulful vocals and thought-provoking, sometimes-bilingual lyrics that easily draw comparisons to Jill Scott, La Lupe and Queen Latifah. She was also a founding member of the Rebel Diaz Arts Collective (RDAC) in the South Bronx.

The proud Afro-Taina currently is one of the creative minds behind Mama's Hip-Hop Kitchen, a hip-hop theater showcase aiming to unite women of color through art and spoken word.

Mama’s Hip-Hop Kitchen, the Soup Kitchen for Hip-Hop Soul is a multifaceted event designed to showcase women artists, especially women of color. MHHK serves as a social justice community-organizing platform that educates and empowers women of color on issues that impact their lives including HIV/AIDS and reproductive justice. She is also the founder of 5 events that are themed around very important topics in her life. She invites women who can identify and/or represent the topics through the art form of their choice.

The focus of this year’s edition was “Let’s Get Active!” Since MHHK’s inception Lah Tere knew that as the event grew momentum and exposure many women’s lives would be changed. Little did she know that it would radically change hers as well. “As we were developing the event, something deep inside me was stirred. My personal health and wellness needs my undivided attention and I have made a commitment to make this a priority once and for all. In the process of activating others, I have activated myself.”

Through her political and local activism, Lah Tere has worked to carve her unique feminist niche outside of the commercial, often misogynistic music industry that objectifies females and she’s focused on building community from within.

As an emcee, she uses music as a didactic tool as well as an emotional release. Lah Tere writes and performs about domestic violence issues and links popular media examples of violence against women to secrets and silences in communities of color around molestation, rape and other forms of violence against women’s bodies that are too often normalized and naturalized in the media and by society.

Currently, Lah is working on a debut solo album as well as a collaborative album with her brother. Armed with piercing lyrics and a message to change the world for the better, Lah Tere brings everything to the party. I had the opportunity to meet this warm, fun & inspiring women when she gave a motivational talk as part of Women’s History Month in March at Montclair State University. She is honest and eye-opening in everything she covers from alcoholism in the family, to gangland murders, to lesbian-baiting. In her own words:

“Peace-paz. There are so many things happening around the world right now. And our commitment to the universe is imperative. We must take care of our health, families, communities, Mother earth. We must educate ourselves about the survival tactics, that our ancestors once used. My goal in life is to use spirituality, arts and culture as a tool for education and reclaiming our power. Berdiciones and lots of ache!”

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Sofonisba Anguissola

♥ ♥ ♥ Today's Awesome Woman is Sofonisba Anguissola (1532 – November 16, 1625) At the height of the Italian Renaissance Sofonisba Anguissola was one of the leading painters of the movement, an excellent colorist, draftswoman and composer. Sofonisba's greatest contribution was that she opened the art world up to women painters. As one of the first women to be accepted as an artist within the discipline it allowed many more female painters to follow.

An apprentice to Bernadino Campi, she later (at 22) worked with Michelangelo. He would critique her work and take pages from his sketchpad and tell her to interpret them in her own style (could you imagine!). However, she was still not able to fully enter into the world of art as it was forbidden for women to study "the nude". This effectively barred her from undertaking large scale religious and multi-figured historical commissions.

When she was 26 she was recommended to the King of Spain, Philip II, by the Duke of Alba. This meeting proved to be the turning point in her life and the following year she joined the Spanish court as a lady in waiting to Queen Elisabeth of Valois, herself an amateur painter.

During her time at court that she produced some of her most exquisite works, full of intricate and delicate fabrics, fabulous jewelery and furs. With the death of Queen Elisabeth in 1570, it was decided that the thirty eight year old Sohonisba should marry and the King arranged her betrothal to Don Francisco, a Sicilian Prince. Nine years later he died.

Later in life she met the much younger Orazio Lomellino (renaissance cougar!) and not long after they were married. Settling in Genoa they enjoyed a long life together. Orazio supporting his wife's talents financially and spiritually. In 1623 a young Flemish artist, Anthony Van Dyck visited her and remarked how despite being 90 years old she was still mentally alert, even if her "eyesight was weakened". Sophonisba's last painting was executed in 1620 and at the age of 93 in 1625 she died in Palermo.

A plaque on the tomb, put there by her dotting husband describes her as "among the illustrious women of the world".

Sofonisba Anguissola - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

en.wikipedia.org

Sofonisba Anguissola (also spelled Anguisciola) (c. 1532 – November 16, 1625) was an Italian painter of the Renaissance.

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Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf

Today's awesome woman is Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf. She's President of Liberia and the first woman president in Africa. She is descended from original Liberian colonists and was born in Monrovia, Liberia in 1938. She married at age 17, and she and her husband came to the USA, where she earned several degrees, including a master's degree in public administration from Harvard. She returned to Liberia and began working for then-President Tolbert, who was executed in a military coup by Samuel Doe. Johnson-Sirleaf went into exile in Nairobi, where she served, from 1983-1985, as a director of Citibank.
When Doe declared himself president, Johnson-Sirleaf went back to Liberia to run against him and was sentenced to ten years in prison, but was released and went back into exile, this time to Washington, D.C.

She became Director of the UN Development Program Regional Bureau for Africa. In 1996, she returned to Libya, which had been through much turmoil after the death of Samuel Doe, and Johnson-Sirleaf ran for president again. .She lost the election to Charles Taylor, who charged her with treason.

More biographical info: http://concreteloop.com/2008/09/black-history-spotlight-ellen-johnson-sirleaf

A list of her achievements: http://news.sl/drwebsite/exec/view.cgi?archive=4&num=4507

PBS/Independent Lens "Iron Ladies of Liberia" film info at http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/ironladies/presidency.html

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Gilda Radner

Today’s WOD is Gilda Radner- Just because I could use some Laughter today ♥

Born: June 28, 1946 in Detroit, Michigan, USA Died:May 20, 1989 of ovarian Cancer
Radnor was one of the great comic geniuses of the 20th century, her recurring classic Saturday Night Live Characters included Roseanne Rosannadanna, Judy Miller, Emily Litella, Baba Wawa (a parody of Barbara Walters), Lisa Loopner, Candy Slice, and Rhonda Weiss.
Gene Wilder (Gilda’s Husband) and Gilda's cancer psychotherapist, Joanna Bull, established Gilda's Club in 1991. It was Gilda Radner's wish that a place could be established where people of all ages diagnosed with cancer could come together and support one another through the illness. The centers are non- medical and very homey, with an art center, exercise facility, game rooms, and a children's room called Noogieland, so named for "noogies", one of Gilda's comedic actions. No such place as Gilda's Club existed when Gilda Radner battled her ovarian cancer. Gilda's Club is now North America-wide, with new centers opening up all over the United States and Canada.

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Joanna Macy, PhD

Happy Monday!! Today's Awesome Woman of the Day is Ecophilospher Joanna Macy, PhD. Born May 2, 1929 she has been a voice for peace, justice and ecology through 4 decades of activism. She is the primary source and root teacher of the Work That Reconnects. The theory and practice of this group work are described in her book, Coming Back to Life. She is a scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory and deep ecology. She has created a ground-breaking theoretical framework for personal and social change, as well as a powerful workshop methodology for its application. Her wide-ranging work addresses psychological and spiritual issues of the nuclear age, the cultivation of ecological awareness, and the fruitful resonance between Buddhist thought and contemporary science. The many dimensions of this work are explored in her books Despair and Personal Power in the Nuclear Age (New Society Publishers, 1983); Dharma and Development(Kumarian Press, 1985); Thinking Like a Mountain (with John Seed, Pat Fleming, and Arne Naess; New Society Publishers, 1988; New Society/ New Catalyst, 2007); Mutual Causality in Buddhism and General Systems Theory (SUNY Press, 1991); Rilke's Book of Hours (1996, 2005) and In Praise of Mortality (2004) (with Anita Barrows, Riverhead); Coming Back to Life: Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World (with Molly Young Brown, New Society Publishers, 1998); Joanna's memoir entitled Widening Circles (New Society, 2000); and World as Lover, World as Self (Parallax Press, 2007).Many thousands of people around the world have participated in Joanna's workshops and trainings. Her group methods, known as the Work That Reconnects, have been adopted and adapted yet more widely in classrooms, churches, and grassroots organizing. Her work helps people transform despair and apathy, in the face of overwhelming social and ecological crises, into constructive, collaborative action. It brings a new way of seeing the world, as our larger living body, freeing us from the assumptions and attitudes that now threaten the continuity of life on Earth.Joanna travels widely giving lectures, workshops, and trainings in the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Australia. She lives in Berkeley, California, near her children and grandchildren.

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Dr. Deb Richter

Nominee for awesome woman of the day is Dr. Deb Richter who played a big role in bringing Single Payer Health Care to Vermont. Kudos for 12 years of persistence!

Vermont’s Single-Payer Health Care Bill Moves Ahead

Gov. Peter Shumlin still has to figure out how much the plan will cost and how to pay for it — and whether he will still be in charge by 2017.

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Maria Shriver

Hello, Awesome Women members… I am pleased and honored to offer my first submission to this outstanding group which I’ve admired from afar for some time. I’m acting on a hunch to, “strike while the iron is HOT”, and present… MARIA SHRIVER! Think you know everything there is to know about the former celebrity First Lady of California and exhausted from the current malestream media bombardment? Think again. My objective in choosing this fabulous feminist is to show us all that as real, three-dimensional human beings, and as such, we refuse to be defined archetypically in the press as the scorned spouse or exclusively through our relationships with men.

Toward this end, my entry focuses exclusively on one of the most informative and significant professional contributions Maria Owings Shriver (born November 6, 1955) has made independently from her formal role as the governor’s wife and in collaboration with other progressives. Recently, Shriver took a groundbreaking and original historical look at the transformation of the American woman. In October 2009, Shriver launched "The Shriver Report: A Woman's Nation Changes Everything," a national study and comprehensive report conducted in partnership with the Center for American Progress, USC's Annenberg Center on Communication, Leadership and Policy, and the Rockefeller Foundation. The Shriver Report revealed that American women, for the first time, make up half of the United States workforce and studied how that fact is impacting major institutions like family, business, government and faith organizations. The report was released last year in partnership with Time and NBC News. It was the first study of its kind since her uncle, President John F. Kennedy, asked Eleanor Roosevelt to chair the first Commission on the Status of Women in 1961. That report was published within months of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, the opening salvo of the second-wave Women’s Lib movement. All of a sudden, so many women became activists, taking to the streets and the halls of power. Many of these women risked their reputations, their security, their jobs—sometimes even their lives and marriages—to knock down walls of inequality. They got many outdated work laws changed and new anti-discrimination laws put in place. Their work and their courage created opportunity for many women, enabling more women to go to college and professional schools, more women to play sports, more women to get on career tracks. Today we stand on their shoulders. Their work freed so many of us to dream new dreams and fulfill them.

Yet, feminism has not yet fulfilled all its goals. Fast-forward to today. From Maria Shriver’s introduction & the new report’s key findings: “Women still don’t make as much as men do for the same jobs. Women still don’t make it to the top as often as men. Families too often can’t get flex-time, child care, medical leave, or paid family leave. The United States still is the only major industrialized nation without comprehensive child care and family leave policies. Insurance companies still often charge women more than men for the exact same coverage. Women are still being punished by a tax code designed when men were the sole breadwinners and women the sole caregivers. Sexual violence against women remains a huge issue. Women still are disproportionately affected by lack of health care services. And lesbian couples and older women are among the poorest segment of our society,” in my analysis, exacerbating an institutionally and ideologically-supported feminization of poverty.

The report’s main resulting policy recommendations are that families need more flexible work schedules, comprehensive child care policies, redesigned family and medical leave, and equal pay. This will be a difficult agenda to accomplish in a political and cultural climate that seems to be waging a war on women and workers.

For more great stuff than I could possibly incorporate here, I encourage you to check out the entire website which includes interesting and diverse chapters by powerful pundits and the voices of everyday Americans, like ourselves. Among the selections, there are essays on women’s sports, women’s health by tennis great Billie Jean King, Suze Orman on Money Matters and even an epilogue authored by Oprah Winfrey.

The Shriver Report

A Woman’s Nation Changes Everything

By Maria Shriver and the Center for American Progress,
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2009/10/womans_nation.html

Not just an academic exercise, one of the most promising forms of activism to be generated by Shriver’s report is in 2008, Shriver launched her WE Invest Program, which provides training, mentoring, support networks, microloans and other resources to help women launch or grow their businesses. A microloan is a small loan of money, sometimes as little as $25 or as much as $5,000, that enables a microenterprise or impoverished person to continue or start a business. In June 2009, she expanded WE Invest nationally through a partnership with Kiva, creating the first-ever online peer-to-peer microlending program in the U.S. Shriver is credited with coming up with the idea to bring Kiva's international micro-lending model to the United States domestically to support low-income entrepreneurs like women and minorities in the United States. Following the recession, the organization realized the opportunity and need to provide community driven, low-cost capital for the everyday small business owner in the U.S. Micro-loans Kiva's concept is simple — so simple it seems unlikely. Small-business entrepreneurs who need money are listed on Kiva's site. Individuals who want to lend money choose who'd they like to help. And over time, the lenders get paid back and can lend their money again. Kiva has a 98% repayment rate!

So, in conclusion, I hope you enjoyed and are inspired by this refreshing look at a woman’s life that goes beyond the sensationalized and scandalous headlines to reveal that each one of us can, “be the change we want to see in the world”. Thank you and I look forward to hearing your feedback.


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Colleen Rowley

Hi!! Today's Awesome Woman of the Day is a woman some of you are friends with on Facebook (and I would be too if I could but she is over her maximum). She's someone I have a great deal of respect for because she stood up for what's right as a whistleblower in the FBI. In 2002 she wrote what was intended to be a private memo to then-director Robert Mueller about the misrepresentation and mishandling of facts regarding the time leading up to the events surrounding 9/11. Her memo quickly garnered public attention and became known as The Bombshell Memo by Time magazine http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101020603/memo.html. Although stating her true opinion was a dangerous thing for her to do, it never occurred to her that it might not be the right thing to do as she felt that "speaking truth to power" always made sense and its that degree of integrity that really impresses me. As a result, She jointly held the [I]TIME[/] "Person of the Year" award in 2002 with two other women credited as whistleblowers: Sherron Watkins from Enron and Cynthia Cooper of WorldCom. She also received the Sam Adams Award for 2002.[[I]citation needed[/]]She became a special agent of the FBI in 1984 and was stationed at several posts both domestic and overseasuntil she came ato Minneapolis as their chief legal advisor.After the September 11, 2001, attacks, Rowley wrote a paper for FBI Director Robert Mueller documenting how FBI HQ personnel inWashington, D.C., had mishandled and failed to take action on information provided by the Minneapolis, Minnesota Field Office regarding its investigation of suspected terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui. This individual had been suspected of being involved in preparations for a suicide-hijacking similar to the December 1994 "Eiffel Tower" hijacking of Air France 8969. Failures identified by Rowley may have left the U.S. vulnerable to the September 11, 2001, attacks. Rowley was one of many agents frustrated by the events that led up to the attacks, writing:During the early aftermath of September 11th, when I happened to be recounting the pre–September 11th events concerning the Moussaoui investigation to other FBI personnel in other divisions or in FBIHQ, almost everyone's first question was "Why?--Why would an FBI agent(s) deliberately sabotage a case? (I know I shouldn't be flippant about this, but jokes were actually made that the key FBI HQ personnel had to be spies or moles, like [Robert Hanssen], who were actually working for Osama Bin Laden to have so undercut Minneapolis' effort.) [2][3]Rowley testified in front of the Senate and for the 9/11 Commission about the FBI's internal organization and mishandling of information related to the September 11, 2001, attacks. Mueller and Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) pushed for and got a major reorganization, focused on creation of the new Office of Intelligence at the FBI. This reorganization was supported with a significant expansion of FBI personnel with counterterrorism and language skills.[[I]citation needed[/]]For Americans watching this odd display, the message was clear: This mid-level lawyer ata field office in the Midwest had higher expectations for the FBI than its top leaders. The bureau could be great, was her message, if only it put the goal of protecting Americans above the goal of protecting itself, if only agents were not rewarded for sitting still. In short,she made the Congressmen look like interns on the set of the Coleen Rowley show. Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1003988,00.html#ixzz1MohY8TSBRowley retired from the FBI in 2004 after 24 years with the agency.After this experience, she became much more politically active and later ran for US representative as member of the Democratic Farm Labor party against John Kline but lost due to some questionable circumstances involving a cash contribution and picture that mysteriously was posted on her website portraying her opponent as Col Klink of Hogan's Heroes. She also protested outside GW Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas requesting that Bush meet with Cindy Sheehan and answer some of her questions.

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Frances Perkins

Frances Perkins was the first woman cabinet member in the United States. She was also the longest serving labor secretary, to date. She was an activist and early feminist and suffragette. All these are impressive, and yet are far from completely describing the woman she was.

She came from a middle class family in Massachusetts, and became a Democrat after reading Jacob Reis' "How The Other Half Lives". After graduation from Mount Holyoke she worked at Hull House as a social worker. From there she moved to New York and became active in the suffragette and early civil rights movement. She witnessed the Triangle Shirtwaist fire and that event changed the direction of her life.

From that point, Frances became a tireless worker for labor rights and worker safety. She worked first in city governments and for several administrations in both New York City and the state.

Ms. Perkins eventually became a cabinet member of FDR's administration when he was governor. He had to persuade her to join his administration when he was elected president. She gave him a list of what she wanted before she agreed to work for him in Washington. The list contained, Social Security, Unemployment Insurance and universal healthcare. He agreed! She went on to become perhaps the most influential Labor Secretary in history.

All this was accomplished despite opposition on every front. She was fought tooth and nail by almost every politician and labor leader of the day. She was wickedly clever and was able to outsmart them all.

Obstacles at work were only part of her struggle. She had a husband who spent years in mental facilities, (he probably suffered from a bi-polar disorder) as well as a daughter to raise. Financial difficulties were always a problem for her.

Sadly, these days when you mention Frances Perkins, most people have no idea who she was. And yet she is the woman we have to thank for Social Security, Unemployment Insurance, and many of the workplace regulations we now take for granted. She fought for safe working conditions, sick pay. the 40 hour week, and many more. She also wanted a universal health care plan, and if we ever get single payer, perhaps we should name it for her.


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Christy Turlington Burns

Todays WOD is Christy Turlington Burns (born January 2, 1969) an American model best known for representing Calvin Klein from 1987 to 2007. An ex-smoker whose father died of lung cancer, Turlington is also an anti-smoking activist and an ambassador for CARE. In 2005. She began working with the international humanitarian organization CARE and has since become their Advocate for Maternal Health. She has also been an Ambassador for (RED) since their launch in 2006. Her work on behalf of CARE and (RED) inspired her to pursue a Masters in Public Health at Columbia University’s Mailman School. In 2008, Turlington began working on a documentary film, No Woman, No Cry, profiling the status of maternal health worldwide. The film, Turlington's directorial debut, tells the stories of at-risk pregnant women in four parts of the world, including a remote Maasai tribe in Tanzania, a slum of Bangladesh, a post-abortion care ward in Guatemala, and a prenatal clinic in the United States. No Woman, No Cry made its world premiere at the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival in New York City. Concurrent with the debut of her documentary, Turlington launched Every Mother Counts, an advocacy and mobilization campaign to increase education and support for maternal and child health.

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Florence Nightingale

In light of my current situation, I thought it appropriate to make Today’s AWU WOD Florence Nightingale (May 2, 1820 – August 13,1910). She was a celebrated English nurse, writer and statistician. An Anglican, Nightingale believed that God had called her to be a nurse. She came to prominence for her pioneering work in nursing during the Crimean War, where she tended to wounded soldiers. She was dubbed "The Lady with the Lamp" after her habit of making rounds at night.
Florence refused to marry several suitors, and at the age of twenty-five told her parents she wanted to become a nurse. Her parents were totally opposed to the idea as nursing was associated with working class women.

Florence's desire to have a career in medicine was reinforced when she met Elizabeth Blackwell at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London. Blackwell was the first woman to qualify as a doctor in the United States. Blackwell, who had to overcome considerable prejudice to achieve her ambition, encouraged her to keep trying and in 1851 Florence's father gave her permission to train as a nurse.
Nightingale laid the foundation of professional nursing with the establishment, in 1860, of her nursing school at St Thomas' Hospital in London, the first secular nursing school in the world, now part of King's College London. The Nightingale Pledge taken by new nurses was named in her honour, and the annual International Nurses Day is celebrated around the world on her birthday.

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Phyllis Rodriguez & Aicha el-Wafi

It is Mother's Day many countries around the world. As a bonus, today we honor TWO AWESOME WOMEN OF THE DAY, Phyllis Rodriguez, whose son was killed in the World Trade Center on 9/11, and Aicha el-Wafi, the mother of Zacarias Moussaoui, accused, tried and convicted by the United States of being the missing "20th hijacker".

Women can bridge vast rifts. Women can heal the world. Only women. Happy Mother's Day to all of you. Regardless of how many children you do or don't have, your powers of love and care and action and courage are what the world needs now. ♥



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Sabrina Artel

Today's awesome woman is Sabrina Artel, who travels around the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York in her 1965 Beeline RV, evangelizing against fracking. She does this by bringing "Sabrina Artel's Trailer Talk" -- a combination live performance, community event and radio broadcast -- to local communities who are being wooed by drilling companies who pay out big lease money in order to frack on the property owner's land. See http://trailertalk.net/

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Judi Bari

Today’s WOD is Judi Bari was Born in Baltimore MD, U.S., on Nov. 7,1949. She was a leading US environmental activist, human rights activist and feminist until her death from breast cancer on March 2, 1997. She was one of the principal organizes of the group 'Earth First'. Judi Bari published one book called "Timber Wars."

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