...with Cousin A initially, about t-shirts at ThinkGeek.com, because there was one in particular I thought she would think was funny...
But then somehow (how do I wind up anywhere in conversation?) I wound up mentioning to Kristen (MLW's cousin -- Hi Kristen!) that ThinkGeek also had two "Heroines of Science" tees -- one for Marie Curie (who I said is the "go to" female when anyone is asked to name a female science from... not the past century), but they also had Ada Lovelace (the first computer programmer). Kristen's point (I believe), was "what, they only have two?" And my point, was, "well, how many can the average person name... or even the average geek." I was not, of course, evaluating the "rightness" of there being only two shirts or even that most people could only name 1 or 2 women scientists...
What I did NOT know (an amount slightly smaller than the area of the Grand Canyon...) was that for the first month, ThinkGeek is donating a "portion of the proceeds" of the sales of these two shirts to The Girl Effect. What's that, you ask? (Or perhaps you are more aware than I am -- it's not hard to be so...) It sounds kinda like it's like OxFam but focused specifically on girls in the developing world... (Don't get on me about using the word, "girl," either, because they do...)
*sigh* I don't think I'm explaining this very well. A couple of months ago, MLW and I were watching TV (shocking, I know...) and it was either a PBS thing or The Daily Show, but something made me hit pause on the TiVo and I had what passes for a quasi-profound moment around here, and said something like, "You know, the world is only going to get better when all cultures realize that women should be treated with respect. [pause]. No, that's not the word I want... when everyone realizes that women should be valued as much as men." As with most of my quasi-profound thoughts, I didn't have the solution, just a slightly better grasp of the problem for a moment, and then an overwhelming despair at the realization of the scope of the thing...
I guess my point is, these folks seem to have the solution. So go to their site and take a minute to watch their opening video (really cool, yet simple and powerful), and then maybe buy a shirt or just throw them some extra dough. It's clearly a good cause.
Thanks for reading.
Sunday, June 06, 2010
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Dear Jonathan,
Greetings from the distaff side of the human race! I will try to be brief, since I have my own blog, and this is your audience...
1. The Sunday May 9, 2010 New York Times Crossword puzzle's theme was Mothers of Invention, wherein all the major clues' solutions were female inventors of some pretty surprising items, such as: the windshield wiper, the circular saw, COBOL, Liquid Paper, and a leukemia drug.
2. There is already a movement underway, http://www.halftheskymovement.org/, called Half The Sky, based on the book called Half The Sky, about the 3 issues that women around the world face every day: gender-based violence, maternal/infant mortality, and sex trafficking/forced prostitution. The authors were interviewed on both The Daily Show and Stephen Colbert, and survived! Heavy stuff, but at least someone already wrote the book...and once they solve those 3 problems, imagine what's possible :D
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