Michelle Bachelet

Today's awesome woman of the day is Michelle Bachelet, who was tortured by the goat-blower Pinochet but eventually became president of Chile. Presidents cannot serve two consecutive terms in Chile, but she left office with an 82% approval rating and has not ruled out running again in 2013. She is now the head of the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. She rocks.

Michelle Bachelet - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

en.wikipedia.org

Verónica Michelle Bachelet Jeria (Spanish pronunciation: [miˈtʃel βatʃeˈlet]; born September 29, 1951) is a Social Democrat politician who was President of Chile from 11 March 2006 to 11 March 2010. She was the first woman president of her country. In September 2010 Bachelet was appointed as the hea...

Marlene Dietrich

Today's Awesome Woman is Marlene Dietrich (1901-1992) a German-born actress and singer who defied social mores, and who succeeded in reinventing her public self several times over during the course of her long career. She defied the conventional image of how a woman is supposed to dress, becoming one of the talkies' first femme fatales and was a fashion icon. She defied how a woman is supposed to act both in her movie roles and in her personal life (which she managed to keep relatively private). She defied the label "box office poison" after a flop and went on to star in several more successful movies. She defied the public's conception of her as a haughty movie star and rolled up her sleeves to do heavy wartime work during World War II. Then she stepped into a new era of being mostly a highly paid cabaret star from the 1950s through the end of her active career in the 1970s. And after retiring from the public view, Dietrich remained politically active. Marlene Dietrich defied everything except being herself.

Dietrich's first stage appearances were as a chorus girl in vaudeville-style revues in the 1920s. She was bisexual,  and enjoyed the thriving gay scene of the time and drag balls of 1920s Berlin. She married her only husband, Rudolf Sieber, in 1923 and gave birth to her only child, Maria Elisabeth Sieber, in 1924. After some smaller parts on stage musicals and in silent films, her breakout as a star came when she was cast as Lola Lola, a magnetic cabaret singer who brought down a respectable professor, in Josef von Sternberg's The Blue Angel (1930).

The film saw international success and Dietrich moved to Hollywood under a 6-contract deal with Paramount. Her first American film was Morocco. She knew very little English and learned her lines phonetically, but earned the only Oscar nomination of her career. In Morocco she wore a tuxedo and white tie, and kissed a woman. Dietrich was known for cross-dressing and her image had (oddly, considering the times) unquestioned appeal to men and women alike. She once said, "I dress for myself. Not for the image, not for the public, not for the fashion, not for men."

Five more highly successful films were made with Paramount (also under von Sternberg's direction): Dishonored, Shanghai Express, Blonde Venus, The Scarlet Empress, and The Devil is a Woman. After the contract was up, under a different director Dietrich starred in a 1937 film that bombed, resulting in her and many other major stars being labeled as "box office poison." But she revived her stardom and went on to make many more films.

With the ascendancy of the Nazi part in Germany, which Dietrich vehemently opposed, she became an American citizen in 1939. When the United States entered World War II she became the first celebrity to raise war bonds. She toured the U.S. for a year and a half, and it is said she sold more war bonds than any other star. During 1944 and 1945 she made USO tours of Europe, even performing for troops on the front lines, even inside Germany. She sang songs, performed on her musical saw (a skill picked up during her early cabaret years), and entertained the troops with a "mind reading act" that was rife with sexual innuendo and had church groups complaining. She recorded songs for OSS use, recording at least one in German, and actually became a favorite of soldiers on both sides of the war. She also toured the military hospitals to pay personal visits to bring cheer to wounded soldiers.

Dietrich was awarded the Medal of Freedom by the United States in 1947, which she said was her proudest achievement, and the Légion d'honneur by France as well. She had been raised as a Protestant but lost her faith during her wartime experiences, once saying, "If God exists, he needs to review his plan."

From the early 1950s until the mid-1970s, Dietrich worked almost exclusively as a highly-paid cabaret artist, performing live in large theaters in major cities worldwide, working with Burt Bacharach as her arranger and recording albums with him as well.

As for her rich private life through all these decades, as summarized in Wikipedia (be careful, this may make you dizzy):

Throughout her career Dietrich had an unending string of affairs, some short-lived, some lasting decades; they often overlapped and were almost all known to her husband, to whom she was in the habit of passing the love letters of her men, sometimes with biting comments. During the filming of Destry Rides Again, Dietrich started a love affair with co-star Jimmy Stewart, which ended after filming. In 1938, Dietrich met and began a relationship with the writer Erich Maria Remarque, and in 1941, the French actor and military hero Jean Gabin. Their relationship ended in the mid-1940s. She also had an affair with the Cuban-American writer Mercedes de Acosta, who was Greta Garbo's lover. Her last great passion, when she was in her 50s, appears to have been for the actor Yul Brynner, but her love life continued well into her 70s. She counted John Wayne, George Bernard Shaw and John F. Kennedy among her conquests. Dietrich maintained her husband and his mistress first in Europe and later on a ranch in the San Fernando Valley, California.

In her 60s and 70s, Dietrich's health declined, after a bout with cervical cancer and several stage accidents. She was known to be an alcoholic and became dependent on painkillers. But even after retreating to the privacy of her Paris apartment for the final, mostly bedridden, 11 years of her life, she stayed active politically via telephone, including having had conversations with Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. She also stayed in constant contact with her daughter (her husband had died in the 70s), and with biographer David Bret, with whom she had developed a close relationship and who was one of the only people allowed into her apartment. It is believed that Bret was the last person that Dietrich spoke to, two days prior to her death: "I have called to say that I love you, and now I may die."

Flavia de la Fuente

Today’s Awesome Woman is Flavia de la Fuente. As many of us wonder about the fate of our world, I take heart that there are young women emerging who are energized, optimistic and excited to take on the challenges ahead. A recent graduate of UCLA, Flavia was chosen as the student speaker at the June 2010 commencement ceremony. As a student in political science, Flavia was active in a range of political issues, including the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign, human rights violations in Burma, and the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (Dream) Act, which provides a path to citizenship for undocumented college students. (1) After graduation she went to work for the Sierra Club as an organizer. When offered a choice of places to work, she chose the most challenging - Texas. "I firmly believe in going to the trenches and being where the fight is," says de la Fuente. (2) The switch from immigration reform to climate change was motivated by "But I started to think on a bigger level about what real immigration reform is, and I realized that what motivates me is that I hate it when people are forced to leave their homes due to circumstances beyond their control," says de la Fuente. "And the biggest driver of that in the future is going to be climate change." (2)

I’m looking forward to seeing where this young woman goes in the future!

(1) http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/activist-political-science-major-158367.aspx

(2) http://www.grist.org/climate-change/2011-10-24-happy-warrior-fighting-coal-where-its-hardest

Activist and political science major to serve as student speaker at UCLA commencement / UCLA Newsroo

newsroom.ucla.edu

Activist and political science major to serve as student speaker at UCLA commencement / UCLA Newsroom

The Women of Fleck

Awesome Women of the Day are the women of Fleck. I was reminded of them in the recent Star piece on Michele Landsberg's writings, which included this one. I grew up not so far from Huron Park (partied there a few times back in the day) but need to talk to some people I know who worked there - a bit after the strike, but I really want to learn more about these gutsy 'girls'.

May 1978: Fleck women put fire back into feminism

www.thestar.com

Bored by women's liberation? Feel your raised consciousness sagging just a bit?

Taryn Davis

Today’s WOD is Taryn Davis born 1986, widowed by the age of 21 and founder of The American Widow Project.

With the recent announcement that all US troops in Iraq will be home by Christmas, I felt it was a good time to remind us that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have created more military widows in the US than we have seen in two generations. These women are young, they have suffered an enormous loss and they are in desperate need of compassion and understanding from others who know exactly what they are going through.

When she entered her 20’s Taryn felt that all the pieces of her life had come together, she had married Michael Davis her best friend her soul mate, she was about to graduate from college and had planned to enter into a career in criminal justice. Her husband had been deployed to Iraq he had already served eight months and was supposed to be home in another seven. They contacted eachother regularly over skype and she heard his voice over the phone which helped them stay close through their physical separation. On May 21, 2007 they had talked on instant messenger about mundane every day things and how much they loved each other. At 7:35 he abruptly had to sign off, it was not unusual; she went on with her day and went to her parents for a visit. At 10:30pm she received a call from her neighbor asking her to come home. At 11pm she arrived home to see two men, wearing the same uniform her husband had worn to their wedding a year and a half before, waiting to tell her that an hour after they last spoke his vehicle was hit by thousands of pounds of detonation and he would be returning home in a flag-covered casket.

At 21, she stood at a podium and read her husband’s eulogy. As the days turned into weeks the support drifted away. Taryn spent night after night researching support services and looking for others who shared the same tragedy in a time of war. Four months later with no desire to continue living, she Googled "Widow" in hopes to just see someone like her: a young military widow, someone who would be honest and candid, someone who knew what it was to hit rock bottom and feel there was no way to get back up.

Google responded with, "Did you mean: Window?"

Feeling lost and alone, Taryn reached out to one of the widows whose spouse died in the same incident as her husband. What started with one widow, inspired her to travel across the country to hear other women’s stories of love, tragedy and survival. In hearing their accounts, she hoped to learn more about the title that had been given to her–that of a military widow.

What began as her own personal journey has expanded into a documentary film and The American Widow Project, a non-profit organization dedicated to the new generation of military widows. Four years later, the American Widow Project is the only non-profit organization solely dedicated to the new generation of military widows. Consisting of over 850 military widows (and growing), a website that bears candid amazing stories of tribulations and celebrations, national events held throughout the country (over 16 held and counting), and a hotline answered by a fellow widow. They don't have counselors or put these women in a room to talk about grief; they get these women out in the world, living life, fueling it with their grief, their love for their hero, and the legacies they each carry.
Taryn has grasped on and embraced her new life with all the enthusiasm and passion she had when Michael was still alive. Inspired solely by the willpower and strength of the women “in her shoes” she has found that true love is eternal, that the lessons and things her husband said and did still run through her veins and that she is not alone.

She has found her passion–to carry on a hero’s legacy, empower widows, share the other side of the sacrifice being made by those supporting our troops and to follow her heart and dreams. Taryn hopes to reach out to her generation by making them aware that sacrifice and survival takes place on a daily basis.

There are over 3,000 military widows from Iraq and Afghanistan, not including those who lost their heroes to non-combat reasons once returning home. Taryn wants to reach them all, to allow them to know the services and camaraderie they have waiting for them are there, among those who know the true depth of the loss, love and pain.

Their husbands gave their lives for the lives of their fellow service members. The American Widow Project allows them to find pride in their title as a military widow, pride in the ultimate sacrifice made by their soul mate, and pride in finding the spark to live life, give back, and heal on this lifetime journey they are each taking.


“These women gave me back my life, not to start a new life but to start a new chapter in the story of my life from a wife to young military widow. They are my heroes.”- Taryn Davis

http://wowelle.com/2010/09/03/the-american-widow-project-or-dealing-with-the-most-painful-aftermath-in-us-post-iraq-and-afghanistan-military-campaigns/
http://www.womenofworth.com/honorees/Honoree2010Detail.aspx?nomid=d31a0c41-702c-4948-84f1-b0825af540aa


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/taryn-davis/military-widow-project_b_930359.html
http://www.americanwidowproject.org/

Mahsatī

The awesome woman of the day is Mahsatī Ganjavi (b. circa 1086), a poet philosopher who lived in 12th century Ganja, a city in modern-day Azerbaijan. She was an eminent Persian poet, said to have associated with famous contemporaneous poets Omar Khayyam and Nizami Ganjavi. She was also, it is believed, a consort of Sultan Sanjar, and lived a free lifestyle that included many love affairs.

She is often described as writing poems about love, sexuality and freedom. English translations of her poetry seem to be locked inside the copyrighted, for-sale domain of academia and I was able to find only two examples (translated by Edward G. Brown) on the Web that go beyond the genre of love poems; they are transcendent and highly evolved philosophy:

The Pathway Finally Opened

When my heart came to rule
in the world of love,
it was freed
from both belief
and from disbelief.

On this journey,
I found the problem
to be myself.

When I went beyond myself,
the pathway finally opened.

English version by
David and Sabrineh Fideler

A world there is for those in love with mines of precious stones

 A world there is for those in love with mines of precious stones,
But bards select a different world as setting for their thrones.
The bird who eats love's magic grain lives on another plane -
His nest beyond both worlds, ignoring riches, scorning fame.

English version by
Edward G. Brown

According to the site where these poems were found and echoed on other sites on the Web, "Her poetry was a strong voice against prejudice and hypocrisy and patriarchy, while upholding love -- both human and divine. She was celebrated at the court of Sultan Sanjar for her rubaiyat (quatrains), but later persecuted for her courageous stand against overly dogmatic religion and arbitrary male dominance."

Janet Siddall

The awesome woman for today is Janet Siddall. After a long career in various diplomatic positions in the Canadian foreign service, including a final stint as High Commissioner (ambassador) to Tanzania, Siddall retired from her career but not from life, nor from her love for service and her connection to Africa. She now serves as an organizer for a branch of the Grandmothers to Grandmothers ("G2G") campaign, in which grandmothers from the West help grandmothers in Africa.

Due to the ravages of AIDS and other diseases, older women across Africa, after having already worked so hard to raise and support their families for decades, find themselves in the position of raising their children's orphans. About 15 million orphans now live in sub-Saharan Africa. Not only do the African grandmothers face caring for themselves in old age, after a lifetime of hardship and poverty and without a national retirement pension of any kind, but now they also must provide the love, nurturing, schooling and material support for their grandchildren.

Siddall's knowledge of African, gained during her days as a diplomat, helps inform her local branch of G2G. But in spite of her elite career she sounds like just a down-home grandma engaging in grassroots actions to raise money for the cause. She organized a potluck dinner that raised $2,500 Canadian, and a "Stride to Turn the Tide" walk that raised $6,000.

Source: http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Making-a-difference/2011/0808/Janet-Siddall-helps-African-families-through-Grandmothers-to-Grandmothers.

Gloria Steinem

The Awesome woman of the day is Gloria Steinem. She has, and continues to inspire me and millions of women.

Ms. Steinem's early life was spent traveling around the country with her father who sold antiques. I've read several versions of her parents' divorce and when that happened. However the result was she lived with her mentally ill mother as a young girl. Her mother was in and out of mental institutions and Gloria eventually went to live with an older sister. She subsequently studied political science and graduated from Smith Phi Beta Kappa.

Ms. Steinem was an integral part of the feminist movement in the 60s, 70s and even now is an active member of the movement, speaking at college campuses, making TV appearances, writing and producing documentaries. Her interests extend to domestic and child abuse, and everything that affects women.

I'm including a link from her web page that gives her many many achievements.

http://www.gloriasteinem.com/who-is-gloria/

“Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning."
The Official Website of Author and Activist Gloria Steinem - Who Is Gloria? www.gloriasteinem.com
Information about feminist, author and activist Gloria Steinem

Karyn Baylis

Today's Awesome Woman is Karyn Baylis - Chief Executive, Jawun - Indigenous Corporate Partnerships and Chair of the CARE Australia People Committee. She was formerly; Director, Organisational Renewal, Sing Tel Optus Pty Ltd; Group Executive, Sales and Marketing, Insurance Australia Group; Senior Vice President, The Americas – Qantas Airways Ltd; Director, NRMA Life Nominees Pty Ltd and NRMA Financial Management Limited. Those roles are so prestigious and rare to be assigned to a woman. She has taken her past experience in the corporate world and applied it to important causes, benefitting a wide range of minorities and the needy.

She has been a director of CARE since 2004. CARE Australia is an Australian charity and international humanitarian aid organisation fighting global poverty, with a special focus on empowering women and girls to bring lasting change to their communities.

Her work with Jawun Indigenous Corporate Partnerships is so important. Jawun looks to support Indigenous leadership to deliver their own strategies and vision, use corporate and philanthropic involvement to build the capabilities of Indigenous people and organisations, foster Indigenous economic and social development in a way that encourages people to take responsibility for their own lives, focus their efforts ‘in place’ with communities who are ready and willing to engage with them and by building a network where Indigenous, government, corporate and philanthropic ideas can be shared.

www.jawun.org.au

E.L. Konigsburg

The awesome woman for Wednesday, October 19, is Elaine Lobi Konigsburg (E.L. Konigsburg), b. February 10, 1930, U.S. children's author, probably best known for her novel "From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler" http://www.amazon.com/Mixed-up-Files-Mrs-Basil-Frankweiler/dp/1416949755/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1 . She's the only author ever to win Newbery and take the runner-up prize as well in the same year.

Konigsburg was born in NYC but was reared in small towns in PA. She said of her upringing, "Growing up in a small town gives you two things: a sense of your place and a feeling of self-consciousness--self-consciousness about one's education and exposure, both of which tend to be limited. On the other hand, limited possibilities also means creating your own options. A small town allows you to grow in your own direction, without a bombardment of outside stimulation. You can get a sense of yourself in relation to yourself, not to a host of accomplished others." http://cms.westport.k12.ct.us/cmslmc/resources/authorstudy/authors/konigsbio.htm

WRT reading: "Reading was tolerated in my house, but it wasn't sanctioned like dusting furniture or baking cookies. My parents never minded what I read, but they did mind when (like before the dishes were done) and where (there was only one bathroom in our house)." Id.

Elaine was an excellent student and became the first member of her family to go to college. She had planned to work a year, study a year, work a year, etc., to pay for school, but one of her professors helped her get a scholarship. She majored in chemistry and loved the creative side of the subject, but she hated the lab work. She continued her studies, though, marrying and going to grad school, and eventually began teaching chemistry at a private girls' school, where she "began to suspect that chemistry was not my field. Not only did I always ask my students to light my Bunsen burner, having become match-shy, but I became more interested in what was going on inside them than what was going on inside the test tubes." Id.

She left the position before her son was born in 1955 and had two more kids within four years. The family moved to New York in 1962, and when her youngest child started school, she began to write. In secret!

Except for her family. When her kids would come home for lunch, she would read them what she had written and watch their expressions.

"I recognized that I wanted to write something that reflected their kind of growing up, something that addressed the problems that come about even though you don't have to worry if you wear out your shoes whether your parents can buy you a new pair, something that tackles the basic problems of who am I? What makes me the same as everyone else? What makes me different?" Id.
E. L. Konigsburg advises would-be writers: "Finish. The difference between being a writer and being a person of talent is the discipline it takes to apply the seat of your pants to the seat of your chair and finish. Don't talk about doing it. Do it. Finish."

 

http://www.eduplace.com/kids/tnc/mtai/konigsburg.html
See also http://authors.simonandschuster.com/E-L-Konigsburg/20030386/biography
http://cms.westport.k12.ct.us/cmslmc/resources/authorstudy/authors/konigauto.htm

STATUS RESCINDED: Nancy Brinker

On February 2, 2012, the women who post these pieces to a Facebook group we belong to (this blog is our archive) have collectively decided to RESCIND Nancy Brinker's "Awesome" status for the Komen Foundation's decision this week to defund Planned Parenthood. Part of the story with links to the rest of it can be found here.

Luckily, many Americans have responded to this crisis by donating heavily to Planned Parenthood directly (over $400,000 in just a couple of days) and have vowed that they will no longer contribute to Komen.

Komen's website was even hacked in solidarity with Planned Parenthood and the families they serve:

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, therefore today’s WOD is Nancy Brinker: Founder of Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.


Born on December 6, 1946, in Peoria, IL Brinker grew up alongside her sister, Susan. Their father, Marvin Goodman, was a real-estate developer and their mother, Eleanor, was a homemaker who lived by the rule of always helping those less fortunate. The sisters, raised in the Jewish faith, caught the community service bug early on. When Brinker was six and Komen was nine, they organized a variety show to raise funds in the battle against polio. "We had little friends who had polio and it was the great threat of our childhood and we were very sympathetic to it," Brinker recalled to the Peoria Journal Star.


Nancy Brinker is the founding chair of the breast cancer research organization Susan G. Komen for the Cure, an organization named after her only sister. Susan Goodman Komen, was born in 1943 and was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 33. She died three years later, at the age of 36, in 1980.
Both sisters married and started families yet remained connected through daily telephone checkins. During one of their conversations in the late 1970s, Komen told Brinker she had found a lump in her breast. Brinker flew to Peoria to be with her sister as she began seeking treatment. Komen underwent nine operations, as well as chemotherapy and radiation, only to die three years after her diagnosis. During the ordeal, Brinker made countless trips between Dallas and Peoria to be with her sister, though at the time Brinker, herself, was going through a divorce and had a young son to care for.


As Komen lay on her deathbed, she asked Brinker to do something so other women would not suffer her fate. Nancy felt her sister's outcome might have been better if patients knew more about cancer and its treatment, she made a promise to her sister that she would do everything she could to end breast cancer. To fulfill that promise, Brinker founded the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation in Komen's memory in 1982. Its mission is bold: eradicate the disease by improving research, screening, education, and treatment.


Shortly after Komen's death, Brinker met multi-millionaire Norman Brinker, founder of the Steak and Ale, Bennigan's, and Chili's restaurant chains. He identified with Brinker's devastation and understood her motivation to do something about it. His first wife, 1950's tennis star Maureen Connolly, had died of ovarian cancer in her 30s. Within months of meeting, they wed. Their marriage afforded Brinker the financial freedom to leave her job and begin working to fulfill her promise to her sister.


Armed with $200, a typewriter, and a list of names, Brinker gathered about 20 friends in her Dallas living room in 1982 and the foundation was born. To raise public awareness, the foundation needed money, so the women organized a polo tournament as their first event. The next year, the foundation invited former first lady and breast cancer survivor Betty Ford to its fund-raising event and nearly 700 people showed up. The next year, the foundation launched the first Race for the Cure. By 1984, the foundation had raised enough money to begin awarding grants for research and education.


Around this time, Brinker was beginning to feel triumphant when she detected a lump in her breast, which turned out to be cancerous. She took an aggressive approach to her treatment. According to the Oregonian 's Leslie Barker, Brinker, upon learning of her diagnosis, screamed at her doctor: "I want them both off today! Get them off me!" Aside from a mastectomy, Brinker also underwent several rounds of chemotherapy and survived, emerging from the ordeal weakened, bald, and determined to help others win the battle. Brinker wrote about her journey in a book, The Race is Run One Step at a Time . Published in 1990, the book also offers advice on seeking healthcare and treatment for the disease.


When Brinker first started the organization, she found people hesitant to talk about the disease—especially male CEOs. Her determination, coupled with her public relations background, eventually helped the organization make headway.


Since its inception in 1982, the organization has grown into a global network of volunteers who raise money and awareness through local affiliates and by sponsoring Komen Race for the Cure events. The first Race for the Cure, held in Dallas, Texas, in 1983, drew 800 participants; within 20 years, the organization was sponsoring more than 100 races annually across the globe, drawing more than one million participants. The races raise money, but also deliver a message of support to survivors.
In 1986, U.S. President Ronald Reagan took notice and appointed Brinker to the National Cancer Advisory Board. Several years later, U.S. President George H.W. Bush appointed her to the three-member President's Cancer Panel and in 2001, U.S. President George W. Bush nominated her to serve as ambassador to Hungary. In this capacity, she helped establish Hungary's "Bridge of Health Alliance," a coalition of civilian groups that work together to raise awareness and funds for breast cancer research. At the time, breast cancer was the leading cause of death for Hungarian women. By 2005, it was the third-leading cause of death because early detection was saving lives.


Since Brinker is a breast cancer survivor herself, she uses her experience to heighten understanding of the disease. She speaks publicly on the importance of patient's rights and medical advancements in breast cancer research and treatment. She is currently serving as the World Health Organization's Goodwill Ambassador for Cancer Control. Brinker is the author of the New York Times bestselling book Promise Me - How a Sister's Love Launched the Global Movement to End Breast Cancer, released on September 14, 2010.


Brinker has helped build Komen by fostering a coalition of relationships within the business community, government, and volunteer sectors in the United States. For her work on breast cancer research, Time magazine named Brinker to its 2008 list of the 100 most influential people in the world. Calling her "a catalyst to ease suffering in the world," President Barack Obama honored Brinker with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor on August 12, 2009


Nancy G. Brinker is regarded as the leader of the global breast cancer movement. Her journey began with a simple promise to her dying sister, Susan G. Komen, that she would do everything possible to end the shame, pain, fear and hopelessness caused by this disease. In one generation, the organization that bears Susan’s name has changed the world.


“People who come to work here don’t show up for the coffee and donuts. They come to change the world. People will work hard for a mission.”- Nancy Brinker


Nancy Brinker Biography - life, childhood, children, name, death, wife, school, mother - Newsmakers Cumulation http://www.notablebiographies.com/newsmakers2/2007-A-Co/Brinker-Nancy.html#ixzz1b696KqnU


http://www.researchamerica.org/brinker_nancy

Louise Hay

Today’s Awesome Woman is American motivational author Louise Hay (born October 8, 1926) often called the “Queen of the New Age”. Her bestselling 1984 book, You Can Heal Your Life is considered one the the top 50 self-help classics. She created Hay House publishing. Hay House’s author list is a who’s who of the titans of the self-help world. They publish books, CDs, calendars & card decks geared towards the Mind/Body/Spirit category and include authors Wayne Dyer, Suze Orman, Deepak Chopra, Marianne Williamson, Sylvia Browne and Doreen Virtue. She measures the success of her life in the people she has helped, both through her books and through the books Hay House publishes.

She emerged as a spiritual leader when in the 1980s she began leading support groups for people living with H.I.V. or AIDS. During this period people with AIDS had been abandoned & even condemned by traditional religion, the medical world offered no hope for them, the general population was in fear & ignorance. “David Kessler, who wrote “On Grief and Grieving” with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, recalls “There were few welcome mats anywhere. And to say she had a welcome mat would be an understatement.” Her “Hay Rides” grew from a few people comforting each other in her living room to hundreds of men in a large hall in West Hollywood. She grew famous for her work with AIDS patients and was invited to appear on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and “Donahue” in the same week, in March 1988. “You Can Heal Your Life” immediately landed on the New York Times best-seller list. More than 35 million copies are now in print around the world. (1)

Her early life was one of poverty & violence. Her stepfather was violent & abusive. When she was around 5, she was raped by a neighbor. At 15 she became pregnant, dropped out of high school & gave her baby up for adoption. ‘Louise ran away from home and ended up in New York City, where she became a model and married a prosperous businessman. Although it appeared that her life had turned around, it was not until the marriage ended 14 years later when her husband left her for another woman that her healing really began.’ (2) She attended the Church of Religious Science where she learned about the power of transformative thought. She became a practitioner, began counseling people & speaking which led to her writing.

‘Today at 81, she lives modestly, considering her wealth. Her daily existence now is a model of earth-conscious serenity: she paints and cooks and gardens, and she commutes between her downtown condo and her weekend home in a gas-stingy Smart car. She has had boyfriends since her divorce, but there’s nobody special now, and that suits her fine. There are things she lacks — she has no immediate family, and she never had another child. But she doesn’t dwell on what’s missing and glides through her days on a cushion of positive affirmations. The cancer is gone; the ugly times are banished. Souls are reincarnated, so death is not to be feared. Once she was in pain; now she is not. She is a role model, proof that the aches do not have to last.’ (1) The Hay Foundation and the Louise L. Hay Charitable Fund are two non-profit organizations established by Louise that support many diverse organizations, including those dealing with AIDS, battered women, and other challenged individuals in our society. (2)

(1) http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/magazine/04Hay-t.html?pagewanted=1
(2)http://www.louisehay.com/about-louise/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louise_Hay

Louise Hay - Hay House - Publishing - Books - Authors - You Can Heal Your Life - New Age - New York. www.nytimes.com
How the publisher Louise Hay unified psychics, mindhealers, angel therapists and positive thinkers of all varieties into a self-help spirituality empire.

Tillie Olsen

Today's Awesome Woman of the Day is Tillie Olsen. She was a writer, worker and union organizer who talked about the difficulties the working class, and working class women in particular, had finding time to write. I have her books Silences, and Yonnondio, which is another good reason to clear out the boxes in my basement. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tillie_Olsen

Tillie Olsen - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia en.wikipedia.org
Tillie Lerner Olsen (January 14, 1912 – January 1, 2007)[1] was an American writer associated with the political turmoil of the 1930s and the first generation of American feminists.

Mary Katherine Goddard

Today’s Awesome Woman of the Day is Mary Katherine Goddard (1738-1816) printer, newspaper publisher, and postmaster. Mary Katherine Goddard was a pioneer among women in Baltimore town in the era of the American Revolution. She was a newspaper editor determined to publish the truth as well as a fighter for the right of women to pursue a career.

She was born on June 16, 1738, in either Groton or New London, Connecticut, in the British Colonies in North America and she grew up in New London. She was the daughter of Dr. Giles Goddard and Sarah Updike Goddard, a woman unusually well educated for that era. Dr. Goddard was the postmaster of New London, explaining why son William and daughter Mary Katherine also had lifelong involvement with the postal system. After her father died in 1762, Mary moved with her mother to Providence, Rhode Island, to help her brother, William, run a printing office. This is also where both mother and daughter began their careers as printers.

In 1765, William moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to open another printing shop, while Mary and her mother remained in Providence to operate the business by themselves. In 1766, they started publishing the Providence Gazette and they issued the West's Almanack. Then, in 1768, they sold the business and joined William in Philadelphia where Mary helped her brother in publishing the Pennsylvania Chronicle.

In 1773, William moved yet again to set up another printing shop in Baltimore, Maryland, while Mary continued operating the business in Pennsylvania before selling it in 1774. Mary joined her brother in Baltimore and took over the operations in the publishing of the Maryland Journal and the Baltimore Advertiser, Baltimore's first newspaper. The paper gave Baltimoreans their first taste of a local newspaper. It charmed, informed, and educated. Among the best newspapers in the colonies, its entertainment and educational content were typified by the motto the Goddards adopted--a Latin couplet by Horace, which translated meant: "He carries every point who blends the useful with the agreeable, amusing the reader while he instructs him."

The May 10, 1775 issue of the Maryland Journal made official what had been in practice for over a year when the colophon was changed to read, “Published by M. K. Goddard.” Mary Katherine proved to be a steady, impersonal newspaper editor and during the Revolution she was usually Baltimore’s only printer. On July 12, 1775, the Journal printed a three-column account of the Battle of Bunker Hill less than a month after it happened. Apparently it was a scoop at the time. From her press, in January 1777, came the first printed copy of the Declaration of Independence to include the names of the signers. Mary Katherine Goddard was also responsible for issuing several Almanacs, while in Baltimore, which now hold a place in the Maryland Historical Society. Then in 1784, following an argument with her brother, Mary Goddard left the printing and publishing business.

In 1775, Mary Katherine became postmaster of Baltimore, probably the first woman so appointed in the colonies, and certainly the only one to hold so important a post after the Declaration of Independence. She continued in the office for fourteen years until in October 1789 when, much against her will, she was relieved on the ground that someone was needed who could visit and superintend the Southern department of the postal system. The authorities believed that this responsibility involved more traveling than a woman could manage. The esteem in which Goddard was held is revealed by the fact that over two hundred of the leading businessmen of Baltimore endorsed her petition to the Postmaster General to retain her position. Remaining in Baltimore, she continued to operate, until 1809 or 1810, the bookshop she had begun as an adjunct of the printing business.

Because Mary Katherine did not engage in public controversies but remained an impersonal editor, there are few statements that reflect her personal point of view. Her brother described her as, “an expert and correct compositor of types,” and respect for her abilities as a postmaster is shown in letters by such diverse people as Ebenezer Hazard and Thomas Jefferson.

Mary Katherine Goddard was a successful businessperson of the eighteenth century who turned enterprises begun by her undependable brother into financial successes. She was the most acclaimed female publisher during the American Revolution. Her reputation for quality work spread far beyond the cities where her newspapers were produced. In the end, she was forced to live in near-poverty when she lost her government job because of limitations set on women of her day.

Mary Katherine Goddard died on August 12,1816, at the age of 78, a woman of achievement who had taken an important stand for freedom of speech and the rights of women in the young United States.

http://www.infoplease.com/spot/womensfirsts1.html#ixzz1aTj77Oqo

http://www.distinguishedwomen.com/biographies/goddard-mk.html

http://www.msa.md.gov/msa/educ/exhibits/womenshall/html/goddard.html

http://www.baltimoremd.com/monuments/goddard.html

Dr. Mary Walker

Awesome woman of the day: Dr. Mary Walker. She became a doctor prior to the Civil War and then served as a surgeon in the Union Army. She was captured Confederate forces, and in general did some really bad-ass stuff. She is the ONLY woman to have ever gotten a Congressional Medal of Honor. Sexist pigs in congress tried to take her CMoH away from her, and she told them to kiss her ass. Congress finally admitted she deserved it in 1977. She wore men's clothing and was buried in a suit rather than a dress. She totally rocked.

Mary Edwards Walker - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia en.wikipedia.org
Mary Edwards Walker (November 26, 1832 – February 21, 1919) was an American feminist, abolitionist, prohibitionist, alleged spy, prisoner of war and surgeon. She is the only woman ever to receive the Medal of Honor.

Erica Jong

Monday’s Awesome Woman of the Day is writer and teacher Erica Jong (1942-present). You can get the beats of Jong’s life on her lameish Wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erica_Jong) but for me, more interesting is this 2007 interview she did with Susie Bright. In it Jong discusses sex as you age, teaching teenagers about sex, and how the definition of what sex is can expand as you go through life. Jong books taught me about life and sex and men and love and parenting and writing. She taught me to appreciate what she calls “the life force” and made me realize that being bookish and literate was pretty fucking sexy. Erica Jong is 69 (!) and is still out there thinking, feeling and experiencing life with passion and love.

http://www.10zenmonkeys.com/2007/10/02/beyond-the-zipless-fuck-with-erica-jong/

Beyond the ‘Zipless Fuck’ With Erica Jong - 10 Zen Monkeys www.10zenmonkeys.com
Meme commentary webzine from the MondoGlobo Network.

Roz Savage

 

The Awesome Woman of the Day is Roz Savage (b. 1967), a British woman who at age 34 left behind everything familiar to her and set out to cross the Atlantic Ocean in a row boat. This was followed by an 8,000-mile row across the Pacific that took two years, and last week she completed her row across the Indian Ocean, thus completing a trip that has nearly circled the globe. Along the way, Savage has spread awareness of the perilous condition the ocean, the mother of all life on Earth, that is suffering because of the actions and inaction of the human race. She now says she is retiring from rowing across the oceans in order to campaign full-time on behalf of them.

A few years back, after 11 years as a London management consultant, Savage sat down and wrote two versions of her own obituary -- one that she was headed for in the life she was leading as a married employed woman living in a big suburban house, and the other for the life of adventure she had always wanted. When she looked at the two hypothetical versions of her life, she quit her job, soon was divorced, and set out on her rowing odyssey. 

Savage's first ocean crossing was as a contestant in a 3,000-mile race, a 103-day journey from the Canary Islands across the Atlantic Ocean to Antigua, completely solo. (She rows truly solo, without a chase boat.) This was in 2005, the year of Katrina and a record number of other tropical storms that were generated in the Atlantic. Savage describes the nearly 2,500 hours crossing the Atlantic -- without a roof over her head, working only with the natural forces of weather and sea current, able to rely only on her own muscle power as propulsion, drinking the sea water that had been pumped through a desalinizer, and nobody to talk with but the wind -- as an inward journey, a psychological odyssey.  In the process she also had formed a connection with the ocean that was not over yet.

When Savage decided to row across the Pacific, she leveraged the notoriety she had gained to advocate for protection of our oceans that are under assault, a situation that gets much less media exposure than global warming and other environmental crises, perhaps because so many humans do not live near the ocean and are out of touch with the critical role it plays in the health of our whole planet. From 2008 to 2010, Savage became the first woman to row solo across the Pacific, in three legs, after an abortive troubled start that ended in Coast Guard rescuing her against her will. She was a designated 350.org Athlete and wore their t-shirt. Mid-ocean she encountered the crew of the "Junk Raft," a boat made mostly of plastic water bottles that Savage said was built to call attention to "the North Pacific garbage patch, that area in the North Pacific about twice the size of Texas, with an estimated 3.5 million tons of trash in it, circulating at the center of that North Pacific Gyre."

Before the final leg of her Pacific journey, Savage gave a TEDtalk, "Why I'm rowing across the Pacific," to bring awareness to her voyage and to report first-hand on the evidence of plastic poisoning she had encountered in the ocean. Just afterward, on April 20, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded, causing the biggest oil spill in history and at least temporarily calling sharp public awareness to the state of affairs with our pollution of the oceans.

When she completed her Pacific journey, Savage wrote this piece for cnn.com:

In the couple of months since this TEDTalk was recorded, I have rowed 2,000 miles from Kiribati to Papua New Guinea in the third and final stage of my Pacific crossing, becoming the first woman to row solo all the way across the Pacific.

During those two months the ocean has suffered new assaults -- notably the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, but also smaller insults, as I have witnessed with my own eyes. On a beautiful calm day, with sunlight glinting off the waves, it is heartbreaking to see a plastic bottle floating on the water. Even thousands of miles from land, the ocean wilderness is no longer pristine.

Mankind's impact is felt everywhere. When I have been alone for a long time at sea -- sometimes over a hundred days without seeing another human -- this evidence of our carelessness is especially jarring. There are times when I feel ashamed to be a human being, and feel obliged to apologize to the small community of fish that congregate beneath my boat for the mess we have made of their home.

And it doesn't impact just the fish. Oceans cover 71 percent of the Earth, and are an integral part of our weather systems, climate control, and food supply. How can we have a healthy planet -- or healthy bodies -- if we don't have healthy oceans?

I row across oceans to inspire people to take action on environmental issues. Something the ocean has taught me is that any challenge, no matter how huge, can be tackled if you break it down into little steps. Crossing the Pacific has taken me about 2.5 million oar strokes. One stroke doesn't get me very far, but you take all those tiny actions and you string them all together and you get across 8,000 miles of ocean. You can achieve almost anything, if you just take it one stroke at a time.

And it's the same with saving the oceans. On a day like Oceans Day, when we feel part of a huge global community, it's easy to believe we can change the world. But there will be other days when maybe we feel alone, and that anything we do as individuals won't really make a difference -- that it's just a drop in the ocean.

But every action counts. We all have it in our power to make a difference. In fact, we're already making a difference -- it's just up to us to decide if it's a good one or a bad one. Every time we say no to a plastic bag or refuse to drink bottled water, it matters.

If I can row 8,000 miles to make a point about the state of our oceans, then you can do your part too. Start by going to http://ecoheroes.me/ and log a single green deed that you are going to do today, Oceans Day, to help save our seas. We have a lot of work to do, but the longest journey starts with a single step -- or oarstroke.

Mae West

Today’s Awesome Woman is the iconic Mae West. Recently I ran across the movie “I’m No Angel” and decided to watch it. The first thing that struck me was that Mae’s body was similar to myself & most of the women I meet these days. You know, the women that are constantly told by the media that we’re fat. They’ve done a really good job of bombarding us with that message. Factor in that there aren’t very many attractive clothes made for full-figure women, and we lose feeling sexy. So back to Mae, I was struck by how she carried herself and could tell that she just knew she was sexy! I was lucky enough to see her when she made a guest appearance at the Mr. America Contest. At the age of 84 she still had it & carried herself like a Goddess.

Mae started working vaudeville when she was 5 years old and later performed in revues on Broadway. Eventually she began writing her own plays under the pen names Jane Mast. Her first play, "Sex", landed her in jail for ten days on obscenity charges in 1926. All of the media attention about the case enhanced her career. Her next play, The Drag, dealt with homosexuality. But the Society for the Prevention of Vice made sure it never made it to Broadway. Controversy ensured that West stayed in the news and most of the time this resulted in packed performances. In 1928 her play "Diamond Lil" became a huge Broadway success.

At age 38, Mae was offered a contract with Paramount Pictures. She made her film debut in a small role in “Night After Night” where she was allowed to rewrite her own scenes. Geroge Raft, the star of the movie, said of Mae "She stole everything but the cameras.” From there on Mae wrote & starred in a string of movies. “She Done Him Wrong” was based on Mae’s Broadway hit “Diamond Lil” and earned an Oscar nomination for Best Picture. By 1933, West was the eighth-largest U.S. box office draw in the United States and, by 1935, the second-highest paid person in the United States (after William Randolph Hearst). Among a phalanx of other films, Mae also wrote & co-starred in “My Little Chickadee”. Mae’s sexuality & double entendres created controversy and contributed heavily to the creation of the Motion Picture Production Code and heavy censorship. Mae’s writing was eviscerated by censors and as a result her films & success suffered.
She returned to Broadway and created a Las Vegas show.

My favorite Mae West story is that when she was dating boxing champion William Jones, the management at her apartment building discriminated against the African-American boxer and barred his entry. West solved the problem by buying the building.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0922213/bio
http://allaboutmae.com/biography
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mae_West

Mae West (I) - Biography www.imdb.com
Mae West (I) on IMDb: Movies, TV, Celebs, and more...

Nancy Pelosi

Awesome woman of the day is Nancy Pelosi (born, Nancy Patricia D'Alesandro March 26, 1940).

Nancy Pelosi was born in a political family, so going into politics was no great leap for her. Her father and brother were both Mayor of Baltimore.

She grew up in Maryland, attending Catholic schools and then Trinity College. She married in 1963 to Paul Pelosi and moved to California, They had five children whom she raised before running for elected office.

Congresswoman Pelosi is also the grandmother of eight, and when then President Bush called to congratulate her on her Speakership, she was expecting a call from her pregnant daughter and answered the phone, “Is there a baby?” probably confusing the president.

She worked her way up in Democratic politics in California, but didn’t become active in seeking office until her youngest child was a senior in high school.

Ms. Pelosi was the first woman elected as House Minority Whip in 2001, and the first House Leader in 2006. The congresswoman famously said she’d have no problem herding the unruly Democrats by using, “ . . . my mother of five voice.”

In recent memory I can’t recall any speaker who was maligned as Nancy Pelosi was. They criticized everything from her liberal politics to her looks to her use of a government aircraft (mandated by the Secret Service). Not to mention the amount of sexist criticism she received. All of this had some root, I believe of how effective she was.

In my lifetime the only leaders she compares to would be Tip O’Neil, and Sam Rayburn (who was the longest serving speaker in history) The volume of legislation she passed is record setting. The tragedy is how much of it died in the Senate.

Thomas Mann, a congressional scholar at the Brookings Institution, said "she's probably gained the reputation as of one of the strongest and most effective speakers in decades." Congressional scholar Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute commented in May on the work of the Congress Pelosi is helping lead: "This Congress has been as active and productive as any I can remember. The number of major bills passed and enacted into law, the serious, sustained activities in areas of broad, complex, and critical importance, all are truly impressive."

She is still the leader of the House Democrats and an impressive woman. I have disagreed with some of her stands and legislation, but no doubt she is an incredibly awesome woman.

Hedda Bolgar

The Awesome Woman for Wednesday, October 5, 2011 is Hedda Bolgar, born August 19, 1909 and still working today, at age 102, as a psychotherapist. The fact that she's still working would be awesome enough to qualify her for Awesome Woman status (IMO, anyway), but there's so much more to her than that.

Her mother was the first female journalist in Switzerland and served as a war correspondent in Budapest during WWI. Her father helped start the Russian revolution. Hedda finished her doctoral work in 1934, taking courses from the group of psychoanalysts surrounding Sigmund Freud. She worked with her co-clinician and good friend Lisolette Fischer to develop the Bolgar-Fischer World Test, a tool for studying the creative thought processes of children that built on the World Technique (sandbox play) developed by Margaret Lowenfeld. The test consists of subjects using small figurines (houses, cars, animals, trees, etc.) to build a "world" that reveals their attitudes and orientations.

During the build up to WWII, Bolgar was very active in anti-Nazi politics. As such, by 1938, Austria was no longer safe for her, and she fled to the United States, where she began post-doctoral studies at Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago. She was the only woman in the Department of Psychology at the University of Chicago.

Bolgar left Chicago for New York and was able to bring her parents and her fiancé to the United States, but her future husband's parents died at Auschwitz. She soon moved to Los Angeles, where she co-founded a school for psychoanalysts. She also founded a training center and clinic that treats patients who can't afford to get psychiatric help elsewhere. Id.

Bolger says "What I grew up with was, if there's an unmet need in the world, you try to meet it, and if there's a problem, you try to solve it." Today, at 102, she still works four days a week and teaches one day a week. "I'm too busy to die."

For more information:

http://www.wila.org/wila_pages/wila_hedda.html

http://www.5min.com/Video/Dr-Hedda-Bolgar-100-Years-Old-326724921

Mary Leakey

Inspired by my recent trip to the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology today’s WOD is British archaeologist and anthropologist Mary Leakey. Born Mary Douglas Nicol on February 6, 1913. As a member of a family of famous anthropologists, Mary Leakey found some of the most important fossils, tools, and other records of early humans in Africa. Her discoveries helped shape our understanding of the origins of human beings. Because of her many important discoveries and her dedication to field research, she is considered a giant in the study of human origins.

Her father was a landscape artist and she spent much of her childhood in Europe, specifically southwest France, where she became very interested in prehistoric art and archaeology. As a child she frequently traveled to France with her parents. There, she visited a museum of prehistory and was allowed to participate in archaeological digs where she found ancient stone tools. She also visited the French caves at Font de Guame and La Mouthe, which are famous for their prehistoric paintings. She was very close with her father and was devastated when he died when she was only 13 years old. Her mother took her back to London to attempt to give her a formal education but Mary was quite rebellious and was promptly expelled from not one but two Catholic schools. Although she lacked a formal education, she managed to combine her inner artist with her love of archaeology and began working on archaeological digs as a scientific illustrator. By her late teens she had met many of the leading archaeologists of the day, and had already been drawn towards her future career.

This is when she met Louis Leakey, her rebellious nature continued as she began an affair with the then married Leakey. Leakey’s wife divorced him and in 1935 Mary visited Kenya and Tanzania with him. In 1936 they married and moved to East Africa where they formed a brilliant archaeological partnership spanning more than thirty years.

From then until about 1962 Louis and Mary faced trying circumstances together. Early in their relationship, he nursed her through double pneumonia. They had three sons: Jonathan in 1940, Richard in 1944, and Philip in 1949. The boys received much of their early childhood care at various anthropological sites. Whenever possible the Leakey’s excavated and explored as a family. The boys grew up with the same love of freedom their parents had. Mary would not even allow guests to shoo away the pet hyraxes that helped themselves to food and drink at the dinner table. She smoked very much, first cigarettes and then cigars, and dressed as though on excavation.

Mary worked with Louis for decades in many excavations. An important discovery of Mary's was the first fossil skull of the extinct Miocene primate Proconsul. Mary primarily worked as an archeologist rather than a physical anthropologist.

In 1959, Mary found the "Zinjanthropus" (Australopithecus boisei) fossil which was to propel the Leakey family to worldwide fame. From the mid-1960's, she lived almost full time at Olduvai Gorge, often alone, while Louis worked on other projects. She and Louis grew apart, partly because of his womanizing and partly because Louis was dividing his time between many other projects. In 1974, she commenced excavations at nearby Laetoli, and in 1976 her team found huge numbers of animal footprints that had been fossilized in ash deposited by a volcano. In 1978 they found what would be her greatest discovery, adjacent footprint tracks that had been left by two bipedal hominids.

Louis' death thrust Mary into the spotlight. In addition to her own research projects she had to take on the roles of fund-raiser, organizer, publicist and lecturer --- roles that Louis had always performed with enormous energy and enthusiasm. It was a challenge accepted with characteristic determination, and Mary soon established herself on the international scene, in constant demand as a lecturer and conference participant all over the world.

In 1983, Mary retired from active fieldwork. Due to the Political developments that wrought great changes in East Africa, Mary moved back to Nairobi with her beloved Dalmatians, to be closer to their family and to concentrate on her writing. However, her heart always remained firmly at Olduvai Gorge where she had lived for nearly 20 years on the edge of the Serengeti Plains --- surely one of the most beautiful wild places in the world.

She died in 1996 at the age of eighty-three. Although it was Louis Leakey who was the more charismatic and well-known figure, Mary became a famous scientist in her own right. Although she had never earned a degree, by the end of her life she had received many honorary degrees and other awards. It is generally agreed that Mary was a better scientist, far more meticulous and cautious than the often reckless Louis. Her prodigious achievements in archaeology make her a giant in the field.

Virgina Hall

Today's awesome woman is Virgina Hall. She coordinated the French Resistance with British intelligence during WWII, and was forced to make an escape on foot across the Pyrenees mountains to elude the Nazis ... and she did it with a WOODEN LEG. She named the leg "Cuthbert". For that alone she is awesome, because that is some hard core snark and laughing in the face of adversity right there. The Nazis hated her and wanted her destroyed at all costs. The more Nazis hate you, the more awesome you are. Thus, she is mega-awesome.

Virginia Hall - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

en.wikipedia.org

Virginia Hall, MBE, DSC (April 6, 1906 —July 14, 1982) was an American spy during World War II. She was also known by many aliases: "Marie Monin", "Germaine", "Diane", "Marie of Lyon" and "Camille".[1][2] The Germans gave her the nickname Artemis. The Gestapo reportedly considered her "the most dang...

Alixa and Naima - Climbing PoeTree

The Awesome Women of the Day are Alixa and Naima, a performance duo called Climbing PoeTree. Poets, performers, print-makers, dancers, muralists, and designers, the Colombia- and Massachusetts-born, Brooklyn-based team has toured the world, working the intersections of so many artistic disciplines and presentation modalities that they defy categorization.  They describe themselves on the Climbing PoeTree website as "the Heart Beat Soul Sister Artist Warrior duo." Their work confronts difficult issues of social and environmental justice and offers a perspective shift, an incensed yet loving realignment to everything about today's world that could get you down, a thinking/feeling view that will infiltrate the heart and mind of anyone who has even a small chink left open in their emotionally protective armor.

In a review of their 2009 show Hurricane Season, Onome Djere writes:

Climbing Poetree were already touring as a spoken word group, waxing eloquent about the economic greed and racism that fuels the prison industry. Using dance, poetry, tapestry, and storytelling, Alixa and Naima started giving birth to Hurricane Season by connecting the numerous dots of environmental and socio-economic oppression they had observed. One example was the news of mercenaries who were contracted to help patrol New Orleans in the Katrina aftermath - in effect, criminalizing its predominantly black and low-income population. Though Climbing Poetree covered everything from the hurricane to the displacement of Palestinians to the plastic island floating in the Pacific, they managed to avoid information overload and maximize emotional impact with graceful transitions and seamless multimedia layering.

The entire theatrical experience embodied the sacred and tempestuous nature of water: the dimly lit underwater cave-like performance space, the fluid dance movements of the performers, the tidal waves of images, metaphors, poignant quotes and audio collages of survivor stories, ebbing and flowing across a huge screen.

I have only begun to get familiar with their work and am utterly captivated by everything I've seen and heard. Among my favorites so far is this existentialist piece that ponders whether the other elements of nature perhaps experience the same sort of silly angst that we, the human element, put ourselves through over issues of appearance, social role, parenting, mortality. For me, the final line of the poem has already become a touchstone I come back to throughout the day, to regain my center when my mind is spinning out on a trip fueled by worries and fears:



In a historical context, we could call Climbing PoeTree "the wandering minstrels of today," or,  "itinerant philosopher shamans." For me personally, though, I see them as brave, shimmering living goddesses of Heart and Truth. Even in a small box of video on my screen, they take me, wake me, and remake me.

Joan Jett

Today’s Awesome Woman is Rock Goddess Joan Jett. As frontwoman for The Runaways, Joan Jett became a female pioneer in the male-dominated world of rock music. She is also a songwriter and producer. I adore Joan Jett. In the 80s she was my style icon - her kick ass swagger combines with leather and enough attitude to out macho the guys. There was nothing coy about her. Her iconic song “I Love Rock’n’Roll” was anthemic. This year Joan is being inducted into the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame.

At age 15 Joan was a founding member of the punk-pop all female band The Runaways, along with Lita Ford, Cherie Currie & Micki Steele. The band was the subject of the biopic The Runaways, a film based on Cherie Currie's biography Neon Angel: The Cherie Currie Story. Joan served as an executive producer on the project, and assisted actress Kristen Stewart with her portrayal of Jett. ‘The band was ahead of its time in many ways, with its hard-rock sound emerging during an era when disco music was king. They also felt dismissed by audiences and critics because of their young age and their gender; the public didn't seem to know what to do with five girls who sang about sex, rebelling, and partying. The musicians' fashion choices also alienated them from mainstream fans; Currie chose to wear lingerie on stage, and Jett often appeared in her trademark red, leather jumpsuit.’ (1) Although The Runaways were poorly received in the US, they were popular in Europe, Asia, Australia, Canada and South America.

In 1980, Jett tried to get a record label to distribute her new album, but she was rejected by 23 different companies. Out of frustration, she and producer Kenny Laguna and songwriter Ritchie Cordell founded Blackheart Records in 1980. Joan toured with her band, the Blackhearts, and put together another album. I Love Rock 'n' Roll became a huge hit, driven in large part to the title track, which hit the top of the pop charts in early 1982.

Although she has not since reached the commercial success of that era, Joan continues to tour extensively. She produced Riot Grrrl acts Bikini Kill and L7. Biography.com notes, "She has also taken an active part in signing bands to her record label. 'We made Blackheart Records what we wanted it to be,' Jett said. 'It's a place where girls can feel comfortable to be—both in a work environment and on an artistic level.'”

Away from work, Jett devotes much of her time to social causes. She is active with Farm Sanctuary, an animal protection organization.” The rock 'n' roll legend has served as a PETA spokeswoman for several years, encouraging others to become vegetarian.

1) http://www.biography.com/people/joan-jett-531004
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Jett

Joan Jett Biography

www.biography.com

Check out the aggressive and popular music of punk pioneer, and women's role model, Joan Jett at Biography.com.