Brave & Bold Women: National Women's History Month

Frida Kahlo by OliverAlex www.flickr.com/photos/oliveralex/1715378245/ Creative Commons license

To continue celebrating National Women's History Month, I'll send you to Pat Mora's blog, Bookjoy, where she gives a few examples of books about brave, bold women. Do you agree that the women she chose were brave and bold?


Over at Children's Book Review, Bianca Schulze chose 5 Kids' Books that Celebrate Women and Empower Girls. What do you think about her choices?


Cleopatra statue photo by Tiffany Silva www.flickr.com/photos/tiffanysilva/3035481904/ Creative Commons license


To dig even deeper, here's a link from Encyclopaedia Britannica that lists 300 women who changed the world. Who is not on this list that should be? Who would you leave off?

What woman--historical, contemporary, or fictional--has had a lasting positive impression on you?

Mother and Daughter on a Swing by Robert Walker MacBeth, 1895

A Swarm of WASPs: WWII Female Pilots

What subject could be more appropriate for National Women's History Month?


When the WASP program ended, these women were forgotten. Never formally part of the Armed Forces, they received no benefits or recognition--until Wednesday, March 10, when they were awarded the U.S. Congressional Medal of Honor. For more about the medal, click here.

My dad's sister, Helen Anderson Severson, one of these pacesetters, was one of the 38 killed in crashes. Helen began her WASP training in Sweetwater, Texas, in April 1943. Her plane, a UC-78, went down in a field near Big Springs, Texas, in August 1943, during a training flight, killing Helen, classmate Peggy Seip, and their instructor, Mr. Atwood. The cause of the crash was determined to be structural failure.

More about the 38 who gave their lives in service is found here.
In her book Flying for Her Country, Amy Goodpaster Strebe writes about a WASP's memory of losing her friends, Helen and Peggy. After that accident, mortality sank in for the WASPs at that base. The book quotes Ann Baumbgartner Carl: "We could fail. We could die. Yet, we secretly felt 'it won't happen to me'...many of the women turned to their God--who for them was indeed their 'co-pilot.'"

PBS did an excellent documentary, Fly Girls, on this part of our history, showing the rigors, joys, dangers, and importance of what these women did.

Here's to these daring women and the model they set for the rest of us!

Listen to the Wind

photo by Howard F. Schwartz, http://www.forestryimages.org/browse/detail.cfm?imgnum=5363901

Prairie people are used to listening to the wind. As the saying goes, there's nothing to stop it but a barbed-wire fence! The wind tells us when the weather is warming or cooling and whether it will rain.

The wind told Greg Mortenson something else. A nurse and mountaineer, he stumbled into a Pakastani village in a mountain climbing descent, disoriented and ill. The villagers took care of him, and when he was well, he wanted to do something to repay them. "What shall I do?" he asked the village elder. "Listen to the wind," the elder replied.

Mortenson looked. He saw children gathered, writing arithmetic problems in the dirt with sticks. An itinerant teacher came to instruct them on an irregular basis. Mortenson listened to the wind and to his heart, and vowed to build the village a school for girls and boys.

He faced many obstacles, but he kept his promise, and continues to build schools throughout the region. His story was told in the adult best-seller, Three Cups of Tea.

Now, Mortenson has collaborated with Susan L. Roth to create a version for children telling the story in words, photos, and collages. In an interview with author Cynthia Leitich Smith, Roth says, "One of the most important roles that I see for children's books is as vehicles for teaching our children about other peoples, cultures and places, leading them easily, comfortably, and naturally to understanding and appreciation of other peoples, cultures and places. This is how I prefer to help people, using the only voice I have. My heavier subject matters seem to me to be logical choices as ways to do this best." Read the rest of the interview here.


The collages use Pakistani fabric patterns to show the villagers' dress and give a three-dimensional feel to the book. The story simply tells how "Dr. Greg" came to the village, and after years of struggles, Mortenson and the entire village--including the children--helped build a school. The book spent 46 weeks on the New York Times Children's Best-Seller List.

Stones for Schools, a current New York Times adult non-fiction best-seller, continues Mortenson's story of the founding of the Central Asia Institute and the ongoing challenges and success of his school building in that volatile part of the world.

Mortenson does not accept government money and promotes no ideology other than the importance of education for girls and boys. To find out his successful process, see his 30-minute interview with Bill Moyers on PBS (or read the transcript). His commitment to educating girls in this part of the world has transformed villages' health and economic situations. See more about the results of educating girls in developing countries here (Click "Fact Sheet" at the bottom).

What do you hear when you listen to the wind?

Winter Remedy

When your afternoon looks like this AGAIN,

here's a perfect remedy--your local butterfly house or botanical gardens.

The Sertoma Butterfly House offers a warm, humid climate and tropical plants to support a variety of kinds of butterflies and give visitors a respite from a brutal winter.

Butterflies hide among hibiscus.

Butterflies feed on fruit and gatorade.



Nature has camouflaged some of these flutterers in amazing ways. Here is the Dead Leaf butterly:

Until it moves, it looks like its name.

This butterfly's closed wings have "eyes" to fake out predators who think it may be a bird or something more threatening:

The morpho butterflies have electric blue wings that show only when their wings are open. That and their tendency toward constant motion present challenges to photographers, but one young fellow was able to attract one, despite warnings not to touch the butterflies:

For more information about butterflies, click here.

We enjoyed our tropical mini-vacation! What getaways have you taken to get a break from winter?

The Lion, Indiana, and the Mouse

You have probably heard by now that The Lion & the Mouse by Jerry Pinkney won the Caldecott Medal, an annual award honoring the best illustration in an American children's picture book. We love the cover and think the Lion bears a strong resemblance to our golden retriever, Indiana. (Imagine him with a mane.) Indiana certainly considers himself king of the household, just as the Lion is the king of the jungle and forest!

Pinkney, a highly regarded artist and illustrator, won the Caldecott Honor five times as well as many other awards, but this one caps his long career. Read an interview here.

The dyslexic Pinkney applied, studied, and perfected his drawing craft, compensating for his reading and writing difficulty. He specializes in creative retellings of folktales or fables.

In the case of his Caldecott winner, he retells Aesop's old fable of the lion & the mouse using only pictures of the African savannah and spelling out animal sounds. He brings the tale to life in a new way, allowing every reader to put his or her own nuance into the story. Themes beyond Aesop's moral emerge, with the animals' expressions evoking emotions from fear to empathy to relief to humor. Every spread is a visual feast.

Congratulations, Jerry Pinkney! Thanks for creating a book for all ages of readers and all ages of time.

Cold Comfort

image from www.flickr.com/photos/seeminglee/3867445255/

Several of you had great ideas for staying warm from hot water bottles to fireplaces to hot cocoa, which brings me to today's post--comfort food!

We are out of the deep freeze here, but one meal that made it more bearable was green chili casserole and hot fudge cake. In fact, I decided that green chilies make me happy! They are good on hamburgers, with pork, with eggs, in soups, in salsa (salsa verde), and so many other ways. Here are some recipes from Pioneer Woman Cooks, if you need some ideas.

Chilies can even be strung on twine and hung as an edible decoration or wreath!


Chilies have a lot of nutritional value, too, adding vitamins A, B2, B6, C, calcium, iron, and other nutrients to our diets. The New Mexico State University's Chili Pepper Institute has a complete list here.

And after a meal containing chilies, what could be better than reading a book about them? I recommend The Chili Queen by Sandra Dallas. Set in late 1800's New Mexico, a motley cast of characters forges friendships--or at least accompliceships--sharing their dreams, grudges, and crimes.

This post lives up to my blog title, for I've offered you something to read, some facts about chilies, and the food that makes me happy. What foods make you happy?

How Cold Is It?

"How cold is it?" the garden cherub asks.

As of 9:45 p.m. on 1/2/10, it is -3 degrees Farenheit, with a wind chill of -19. That is actually warmer than it was this morning! When we went out for breakfast at 9 a.m., the temp was -14! That is the factual answer to the cherub's question. His reply?


"I'm freezing my behind!"

How are you staying warm this winter?