Nora Ephron

Today Tuesday June 26, 2012 the AWOD is Nora Ephron. I am certain that I have done her as an AWOD before but I feel compelled to bring her to our attention again. She is gravely ill and is not expected to make it, so I would like to take this opportunity to remind us all what an amazing screenwriter she has been and what awesome, strong, funny, quirky, witty female characters she brought to life with the stroke of her pen. I personally quote her brilliant lines on a regular basis. Her talent has touched my soul and I for one feel a sense of loss knowing that her voice will be silenced. 

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001188/bio

Lois Swenson

The Awesome Woman of the Day for Wednesday, June 20, 2012 is Lois Swenson, a U.S. peace activist and retired school teacher, who was born in 1936 and was found beaten to death in her home last Wednesday June 13, 2012 in North MPLS, MN.

Swenson was just one of those people who did things. She’d go to places like Central America and stay there for a year or so, learning about the people. She taught sixth grade for many years, and when she retired, she devoted her time to social justice and environmentalism. She had a lamb to mow her lawn, raised chickens, and advocated for community gardens.

She used to go to Laundromats to scavenge discarded clothing out of the wastebaskets, mend them, and give them to migrant workers. And she opened her home to just about anyone who needed help, which, unfortunately, may have led to her death.

Rest in peace, Lois.

From the Minneapolis Star Tribune article that reported her death:

“Johnson grew up on a farm near Arena, Wis., a small community 35 miles west of Madison. "I imagine that she came to the city, like a lot of people, where the money was better and there was a little more excitement," Johnson said.

“Swenson taught sixth grade in Robbinsdale and took leaves to travel the world, learning how people lived in Australia, New Zealand, Africa, Mexico and Central America.

"She didn't just travel there for three or four weeks. She often spent upwards to a year," Johnson said. "She went there to learn. She saw a lot of need and a lot of hunger. And it changed her from a suburban-type girl to someone who wanted to help all the needy people."

“Swenson immersed herself in social justice, peace and environmental issues. In an interview in Minnesota Women's Press, she said: "My college friends, they have to chuckle now, about when I had to have my purse and gloves and hat and shoes all matching, because that was the thing to do at the time. But now, after having lived in places where people don't have shoes, the color doesn't seem nearly as important."

She tried to help Americans understand they could live with less. "She believed in taking care of the environment. She believed in taking care of one another," Johnson said. "She didn't ever use much heat in her house. When you went there, you kept your jacket on. But she gave you hot tea and offered you a blanket."

"Swenson's latest push was for community gardens. When she wasn't digging in her own garden, she was working her neighborhood's garden and helping people raise chickens, Johnson said.”

http://www.startribune.com/local/minneapolis/159131915.html

http://ksax.com/article/stories/s2658107.shtml

http://www.startribune.com/local/minneapolis/159203205.html

Stephanie Kwolek

Today Tuesday June 19, 2012 the AWOD is Stephanie Kwolek born in Pennsylvania in 1923. She was a research chemist working at DuPont, she discovered a liquid crystalline polymer solution that was exceptionally stiff and strong. That material would later be patented as Kevlar, the synthetic material used in bulletproof vests, body armor, safety helmets, and countless other devices.

Kwolek was born in New Kensington, Pennsylvania. Her father, who died when she was 10 years old, was a naturalist by avocation. She spent many hours with him exploring the woods and fields near her home and filling scrapbooks with leaves, wildflowers, seeds, grasses, and pertinent descriptions. From her mother, first a homemaker and then by necessity a career woman, Kwolek inherited a love of fabrics and sewing. At one time she thought she might become a fashion designer, but her mother warned her she would probably starve in that business because she was such a perfectionist. Later Kwolek became interested in teaching and then in chemistry and medicine.

As a child, Kwolek was encouraged by her father to learn about nature and enjoyed math and science. Initially, she planned upon a career in medicine, graduated from Margaret Morrison Carnegie College, now a part of Carnegie Mellon University, and earned her BS degree in chemistry. Searching for employment to save money for medical school, Kwolek was hired by the Dupont Company for a research position at the textile fibers laboratory. Working with great determination, she earned a transfer to Dupont's pioneering research laboratory in Delaware. She specialized in low-temperature processes for the creation of long molecule chains that resulted in petroleum-based synthetic fibers of tremendous rigidity and strength. In 1965, she discovered a new fiber, an aramid fiber and a new branch of synthetics, liquid crystalline polymers. Thoughts of medical school faded. Kwolek engaged in four decades of cutting edge chemical research. It was ten years before the first Kevlar bulletproof vests came on the market(1975). Kevlar today has hundreds of uses and has saved thousands of lives. Kwolek is the recipient or co-recipient of 17 United States patents, including one for the spinning method that made commercial aramid fibers feasible, and five for the prototype from which Kevlar was created. An Inductee of the National Inventors Hall of Fame and the Engineering and Science Hall of Fame, Kwolek won the 1999 Lemelson-MIT Lifetime Achievement Award, the 1996 National Medal of Technology, the Perkin Medal, and the American Innovator Award (1994). She is known for mentoring women scientists and for her contributions to science education of young children.

Merle Hoffman

Today Tuesday June 12, 2012 the AWOD is Merle Hoffman.

(In the current climate in the US we need more women like this to help push back on the war on women.)

Merle Hoffman was born in Philadelphia March 6, 1946 and raised in New York City. She is a legendary women’s rights activist, an award winning journalist, political organizer and health care pioneer. Since the early 1970s, she’s fought on the front lines of the war against women, standing up against anti-choice activists since before Roe v. Wade was passed. In 1971, Hoffman helped found one of America’s first ambulatory abortion centers: the Flushing Women’s Medical Center in New York, since renamed Choices Women’s Medical Center.

Under Hoffman’s leadership, the center has expanded to offer a comprehensive range of both reproductive and primary care services. The medical center is founded under the vision of “Patient Power,” a term Hoffman coined, which is a philosophy grounded in knowledge and education, empowering all patients in the health care system.

She is also the co-founder of the National Abortion Federation, a professional association of abortion providers, and founder of the New York Pro-Choice Coalition, the first umbrella organization of pro-choice individuals and organizations committed to ensuring legal, safe abortion in New York. Hoffman is publisher and editor-in-chief of On the Issues magazine, an online feminist magazine of independent, critical thinking.

In an historic joint venture with the Yelstin Government she worked on developing the first feminist outpatient medical center in Russia as well as organizing Russian Feminists to deliver an open letter to Boris Yeltsin on the state of women's health care. As an activist and organizer, Hoffman was co-founder of the National Abortion Federation (NAF), founder of the New York Pro-Choice Coalition, and organized the first pro-choice civil disobedience action at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City. She is a frequent media guest and speaker, including at the 1995 International Women’s Conference in Beijing. She co-produced the documentary film, “Abortion: A Different Light," and produced and hosted a thirty minute cable TV show entitled "MH: On The Issues." In 2002, she was appointed to the National Advisory Board of American Philosophical Practitioners Association. Her archives were acquired by Duke University in 2002 and are a major part of the Sally Bingham Center's women's History papers. Hoffman has been honored for her work by the Department of Corrections of New York City, National Organization for Women (NOW), Women's Health Care Services, Ecovisions, Community Action Network, the National Victim's Center, the Congress of Racial Equality, the Veteran Feminists of America, former NYC Mayor Ed Koch, and others. Hoffman writes frequently on topics related to women, politics and medical care, including for the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the Journal of American Women's Associations, in addition to her groundbreaking interviews and editorials in On The Issues Magazine.

Today, she continues to serve as the CEO of Choices, now one of the nation’s largest women’s medical facilities. The legacy of Hoffman’s work and the work she continues to this day has had an immeasurable impact on women’s rights.

Laurie Anderson

The Awesome Woman for Wednesday, June 6, 2012 is Laurie Anderson, US performance artist, composer, singer, painter, inventor, born June 5, 1947.

Anderson is quite well known in the NYC art/music world, and she had pretty large commercial successes back in the early 80s with her albums Big Science, Mr. Heartbreak, and Home of the Brave. I saw her on the Mr. Heartbreak tour and was just completely awed by both the depth and breadth of her talents and awareness. Her songs are somehow both strange and relatable, and one reviewer back in the day described them as a travelogue by a space alien writing about the things she has seen with her own three eyes. (Source unknown - I have googled and yahooed and binged and failed.)

She invented, among other things, a violin bow strung with magnetic tape that plays musical samples as you play the violin.

Below the video and links, you can find a blurb and a quote re: her latest record.




http://www.laurieanderson.com/home.shtml

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

http://www.nonesuch.com/artists/laurie-anderson:

The themes Anderson explores with Homeland cover a breadth of contemporary issues, from the war and the media to America’s growing surveillance culture and the environment. In 2004, while making a film commissioned for the World Expo in Japan, Anderson began to contemplate the meaning of place via the short stories she was using in the work. One of the stories touched on losing things, or the feeling of losing things. “‘I knew I had lost something but I just couldn’t put my finger on it,’ was one of the lines in the story,” Anderson explains. “Like when you feel bereft and you don’t know whether it’s because you lost your keys or your job or because your grandfather just died,” she continues. “But I started to think about when I wrote that story and I remembered that it was when we began the invasion of Iraq. And what I’d lost was my country.” Anderson applies that notion to Homeland’s thematic threads.

Jill Biden

Since Today is her 61st Birthday:

Today Tuesday June 5, 2012 the AWOD is Dr. Jill Biden, the wife of Democratic Vice President of the United States Joe Biden. Jill Tracy Biden (née Jacobs, previously Stevenson) was born June 5, 1951 in Hammonton, New Jersey and grew up in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania. Moving several times while very young, she and her four younger sisters spent the majority of their childhood in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania. Her father, Donald C. Jacobs (1927–1999), was a bank teller who became head of a savings and loan in Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania. His family name had originally been Giacoppa before her Italian grandfather anglicized it. Her mother, Bonny Jean Jacobs (1930–2008), was a homemaker. The family was not particularly religious, but in ninth grade, Jill independently took classes in order to join the Presbyterian church.

Jill always intended to have her own career. She began working at age 15, which included waitressing at the Jersey Shore. She attended Upper Moreland High School, where she was somewhat rebellious and enjoyed her social life, but always liked English class. She graduated in 1969.

She married Joe Biden in 1977 and became stepmother to his two young sons from his first marriage, Beau and Hunter, whose mother and baby sister died in a car accident. Joe and Jill Biden have a daughter, Ashley, born in 1981. Now their three children, Ashley is a social worker; Beau, is the Attorney General of the State of Delaware and a Major in the Delaware Army National Guard; and Hunter is a lawyer. They have two daughters-in-law, Kathleen and Hallie, and are also the proud grandparents of five children: Naomi, Finnegan, Maisy, Natalie, and Hunter.

Jill Biden wears many hats: she is a mother and grandmother, she is a life-long educator, she is a proud Blue Star mom, and an active member of her community. As Second Lady, Jill works to bring attention to the sacrifices made by military families, to highlight the importance of community colleges to America’s future, and to raise awareness around areas of particular importance to women, including breast cancer prevention. Jill also continues to teach English full-time at a community college in nearby Virginia.

Jill has always said that community colleges are “one of America’s best-kept secrets.” She is working to highlight the critical role of community colleges around the country in preparing the American workforce of the future. In the fall of 2010, she hosted the first-ever White House Summit on Community Colleges with President Obama, and she continues to work on this outreach on behalf of the Administration – frequently visiting campuses, meeting with students and teachers, as well as industry representatives around the country.

As a military mom, Jill understands first-hand how difficult it can be to have a loved one deployed overseas. In Delaware, she was active with a nonprofit organization called Delaware Boots on the Ground, which helps families during times of military deployment by organizing community events to raise awareness and support. As Second Lady, Jill has dedicated herself to shining a light on military families’ strength and courage as well as the challenges that they face. She travels regularly to military bases in both the United States and abroad to speak with service members and their families.

Through their Joining Forces initiative, First Lady Michelle Obama and Dr. Biden have issued a national challenge to all Americans to take action and find ways to support and engage our military families in their own communities. Joining Forces aims to educate, challenge, and spark action from all sectors of our society – citizens, communities, businesses, non-profits, faith based institutions, philanthropic organizations, and government – to ensure military families have the support they have earned. At www.joiningforces.gov, Americans can find many ways to take action.

In 1993, after four of her friends were diagnosed with breast cancer, Jill started and is was the President the nonprofit organization, Biden Breast Health Initiative in Delaware which provides educational breast health awareness programs free of charge to schools and other groups in the state of Delaware. In the past 18 years has educated more than 10,000 high school girls about the importance of early detection of breast cancer. For the past three years, Jill and the Vice President have served as the Honorary Co-Chairs for the Global Race for the Cure in Washington, D.C. Jill continues to stress the importance of breast cancer research and early detection.

In 2007, Biden helped found Book Buddies, which provides books for low-income children. Also, after years of teaching English to college and high school students, Biden has wrote a book of her own.

She wrote a children’s story, “Don’t Forget, Nana, God Bless Our Troops,” told from the point of view of granddaughter Natalie Biden and a tribute to soldiers and their families. Biden, called Nana by her granddaughter, has met with many military families and said she thought of doing the book as she realized how many people did not understand their experiences. The story is especially personal because son Beau Biden, spent a year in Iraq. According to Simon & Schuster, “the readers follow Natalie’s experience as she learns to cope with missing her father and finds comfort in the kindness of members of her community, including teachers and neighbors and the strength and pride that she and her mother and brother felt from being part of a military family. The book also includes resources about what readers can do to support military service members and their families serving at home and abroad.”

Jill has been an educator for three decades. Prior to moving to Washington, D.C., Jill taught English at a community college in Delaware, at a public high school and at a psychiatric hospital for adolescents. Jill earned her Doctorate in Education from the University of Delaware in January of 2007. Her dissertation focused on maximizing student retention in community colleges. Since 2009, she has been a professor of English at Northern Virginia Community College and is thought to be the first Second Lady to hold a paying job while her husband is Vice President. She also has a two Master's Degrees — both of which she earned while working and raising a family.