O And P Are For...

I'm still behind on everything and I am so so sorry to those of you that have visited me and I haven't made it to your blogs or commented back. I am still unpacking, working and taking care of some other deadlines that have since caught up with me. Five days off line and it's like gooey kablooie around here for me. That thud is my head hitting the desk. The white-coated ones are not far behind. "They're coming to take me away..." Anyway, enough crazy, pity party talk and on with the A to Z.

O is for Ellen Ochoa, the first Hispanic female astronaut and the current Deputy Director of the Johnson Space Center.  Ellen first went into space aboard the shuttle Discovery in April 1993. As a Mission Specialist, she used the Remote Manipulator System robotic arm to deploy, then retrieve the Spartan satellite which studied the solar corona. Ellen returned to space three more times, including two visits to the International Space Station. Her third mission, in 1999, was the first time a shuttle had docked with the station.

Ellen  is the co-inventor and holds three patents for an optical inspection system, an optical object recognition method and a method for noise removal in images. She is the recipient of the NASA Distinguished Service Medal, the Outstanding Leadership Medal, the Exceptional Service Medal and Four Space Flight Medals. She has also been awarded the Harvard Foundation Science Award as well as the Albert Baez Award for Outstanding Technical Contribution to Humanity. She has two schools named for her as well. How cool is that? This woman rocks plain and simple.

P is for Alice Paul, a woman whose contributions to the women's suffrage movement are incalculable. At age 20, she graduated from Swarthmore college and went on to earn an M.A. and a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. She joined the National American Woman Suffrage Association shortly after graduation from the U of P. Alice was appointed the Chairwoman of their Congressional Committee in DC where she organized a successful parade to raise awareness of the cause and focused on getting a constitutional amendment  for women's suffrage. By 1913, NAWSA's member numbers were growing.

However, Alice was a firebrand and often clashed with the NAWSA leadership. She left in 1916 and formed the National Women's Party. In January 1917, the NWP formed the Silent Sentinels protest in front of the White House to call for an amendment on Women's Suffrage. Alice and others were arrested, then incarcerated. Locked up at Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia, Alice remained active. She staged a hunger strike to protest the horrid conditions there and the press got wind. Prison officials ordered Alice restrained and force fed her raw eggs through a feeding tube. The coverage of that savagery kept pressure on the Wilson Administration to get an amendment passed. Alice would be arrested twice more until the 19th Amendment was finally passed on August 18, 1920. Just a mere 92 years ago and how old is this country?

Fun Facts

Alice was the original author of a proposed Equal Rights Amendment in 1923, but an ERA would not see the light of day until the 1970's, where it failed.

The 2004 film Iron Jawed Angels is all about Alice, her fellow suffragists and the passage of the 19th Amendment.

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