The Plumas Weekly

No, not the great investigative reporting journal Mother Jones (all though they took her name as an homage to her), but the original Mary Harris Jones, better known as Mother Jones. She was a tireless labor movement fighter –in particular mine workers. Mother Jones’ own family died tragically in a yellow fever epidemic in Memphis, Tennessee. She was also known controversially for not being enthusiastic about the suffrage movement, as she saw it more as a middle and upper class woman’s struggle that did not address the needs of the poor. A dynamic woman from which we all can draw strength–Mother Jones on this Ides of March!

You know what’s awesome? That six people wrote in to suggest number 14 and we we’re planning to put her in here all along. So the FRC community seems to be in agreement that the work of Rachel Carson is really important to us.

Rachel Carson was a writer, scientist, and ecologist who is widely credited with instigating the modern environmental movement. She wrote many books, including The Sea Around Us (1951), The Edge of the Sea (1955), and The Sense of Wonder (1956), but it was Silent Spring published in 1962 that made her a household name.

That book exposed the practices of agricultural scientists and the government, and showed that chemical solutions were damaging to natural systems and human health. She was attacked by both the chemical industry and some in government as an alarmist, but she stood her ground courageously. She testified before Congress in 1963, calling for new policies to protect human health and the environment.

Rachel Carson, who dedicated her life to science and writing, died in 1964 after a long battle against breast cancer, which she did not reveal in order to avoid accusations that her scientific objectivity would be compromised.

Jeanette Rankin was the first female politician to be elected in the United States. She was elected a couple of years before women even won the right to vote!

Check out the Jeanette Rankin Foundation which awards scholarships to low-income women over the age of 35 who are trying to go back to school to raise their families out of poverty.

BBC News – Viewpoint: What if women ruled the world?.

Interesting piece by Dee Dee Meyers (former press secretary). What would be the same? What would be different?

Mary Leakey discovered one of the first hominin fossils at Olduvai Gorge in 1959, which led to many other fossil finds there. She is probably most famous for finding the Laetoli footprints which are a long string of footprints of at least two ancient hominins that walked on two feet 3.6 million years ago.

While this addresses her mothering more than her science, earlier this year in celebration of what would have been her 100th birthday, one of her son’s wrote this Adventuresome Parenting.

Meave Leakey is still making discoveries in Africa. Her discovery of Australopithecus anamensis and Kenyanthropus keep the debate for oldest ancestor open. More Information About the Family.

FY 2013 Budget: The Facts for Veterans | House Committee on Veterans' Affairs.

While numbers are being thrown around this week regarding cuts to Veterans, some fact checking is in order.

The late Lynn Margulis was a brilliant, pioneering biologist.  She developed evidence that elevated the endosymbiont hypothesis to the status of theory.  Originally mocked as a silly idea it is now standard textbook fare even on the high school level.  The theory, briefly, is that the cells we’re made of (eukaryotic) originated from symbiotic combinations of different species of bacteria. Our mitochondria, for instance, and the chloroplasts of green plants descended from free-living bacteria that ended up parasitising other cells then evolved into more permanent symbiotic arrangements.  Once married to astronomer Carl Sagan, she has co-authored many amazing books with her  son by Carl, Dorian Sagan.  Slanted Truths is a great collection to examine. She was a brave woman.