She certainly sounds like she had the pioneering spirit

Jerrie Mock, First Solo Female Pilot to Circumnavigate the Globe, Dies at 88

That summer, Flying magazine asked Ms. Mock why she had undertaken such a treacherous journey alone.

“It was about time a woman did it,” she said.

The first circumnavigation of the globe by a solo flyer is generally credited to Wiley Post, a Texan whose trip, in 1933, began and ended not quite eight days later at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn. Four years later, Earhart, trying to do the same and flying with a navigator, Fred Noonan, disappeared over the Pacific and into legend.

----

Ms. Mock was born Geraldine Lois Fredritz on Nov. 22, 1925, in Newark, Ohio. Her father, Timothy, was a power plant executive; her mother, the former Blanche Wright, was distantly related to Orville and Wilbur Wright, the aviation pioneers. When Geraldine was 7 her parents took her to a local airport for a short airplane ride; enthralled, she declared she wanted to be a pilot. She grew up idolizing Earhart.

“I did not conform to what girls did,” she said. “What girls did was boring.”

Yay for Felicity!

Branded Pit Has New Home

I'm really proud of how my community reached out to help a pit bull puppy who'd been abused and chemically branded with the f-word undergo surgery to obscure that and now she has been adopted into what I hope is a very loving home! Now if they can just catch the sick person who hurt Felicity in the first place, I would be very grateful.

So sorry to hear about this

Former Kentucky poet laureate Jane Gentry Vance dies at age 73

Former Kentucky poet laureate Jane Gentry Vance, 73, a longtime University of Kentucky professor who penned a large body of poetry, as well as critical essays and book reviews, died Thursday at Taylor Manor Nursing Home in Versailles after battling cancer.

Vance spent 40 years as a professor at UK, where she taught honors courses and creative writing. She won the UK Alumni Association's Great Teacher Award in 1986 and was inducted into the UK College of Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame after her retirement last year.

Jane Vance was a professor in the university honours programme, a 'Great Works' curriculum which I matriculated and remember with great fondness. My memory is a bit fuzzy, but I think she was one of the three teachers who taught our very first semester back when I started the programme, transitioning us from high school to the expectations there. But if not, I definitely knew her name in the department. I've also taken a creative writing class from Gurney Norman, another former Kentucky poet laureate quoted in the article. This is the third professor who taught me various subjects whose obituary I caught when perusing the paper, all dying from cancer. Such a shame.

Okay, this is an absolutely amazing story

First womb-transplant baby born

A woman in Sweden has given birth to a baby boy using a transplanted womb, in a medical first, doctors report.

The 36-year-old mother, who was born without a uterus, received a donated womb from a friend in her 60s.

The British medical journal The Lancet says the baby was born prematurely in September weighing 1.8kg (3.9lb). The father said his son was "amazing".

Do you sense a 'but' coming?

I did have the whole biological clock ticking thing briefly in my 30s, then a sense of relief that I didn't choose to have a child (although I'm not out of the woods yet, as I probably have a few more years of fertility left). But overall I don't understand this absolute impetus to deliver a biological child yourself, and the things people put themselves through to achieve it, often at great risk to both child and mother, as well as heartbreak. I know adoption can sometimes be a very slippery process, and surrogacy opens up many legal questions. But even IVF can be dangerous. I knew someone who was desperate for a child of her own. She went into congestive heart failure when they went to harvest her eggs for the in-vitro. She got pregnant for about a day and then it failed, then dramatically went on about her 'miscarriage'. She became pregnant unexpectedly and naturally a few months later. After the birth of her child, she became wrapped up with him and dropped people like me without children who had been there for her through the ups and down of infertility and endometriosis, and then eventually divorced her husband, for what I am sure were various reasons, but I couldn't help but wonder if he hadn't just served his purpose, since her eventual need for a hysterectomy meant she'd won her battle against the clock and frankly didn't need him anymore. I know that sounds callous. I know she went through a lot emotionally and physically. In the end, she got her child, but after years of hormone therapy got reproductive cancer which I cannot believe was unrelated. The whole thing could have killed her several times over. I just can't believe the whole thing was healthy at all, either physically or emotionally.

In the case above, the child was born prematurely after complications. We can do so much with science these days, push the envelope. I guess the question is, should we? When do we weigh everything and just say, you know, I love children, but I will find other ways to have children in my life? Or, there are so many children in the world who need loving homes, I will do that. Now I'm not saying that everyone who tries fertility treatment is obsessed with having a child to the point of being unstable. That's not what I'm saying at all. Sometimes the body just needs a nudge here and there, after all. And I'm not saying we should deny the chances of someone born without a womb to have the experience of being a biological mother (I almost wrote natural, but I can't really use that word in this case). I am saying we should really weigh the risks--not just the scientists and doctors involved, but those potential parents. Weigh the options. Decide on the best course of action for your situation, and the best situation for the child. Each of us have to deal with the outcomes of that decision. What if I try something terribly cutting edge and there are complications, and the child has a birth defect? Am I prepared for that? What if we go through the whole thing, and the mother's life is endangered? That sort of thing. And absolutely, the good of the child should be paramount--not of the parent. If it's all because of some desire to be a parent, rather than the child itself, it's not healthy and shouldn't be encouraged.

I guess we all have our lines we draw in the sand that we won't cross. Mine was having a child at all. I am simply not financially able to, for one. I have genetic disorders I would not want to pass on to a biological child, especially diabetes, and my health issues would not help the situation, but I'm not particularly temperamentally suited for being a mom, so adoption is also out even if there was money for it. I like kids in the theoretical sense, but I do not establish easy rapports with them. I wouldn't want to be a helicopter mom and steal all their independence, but I'd be a nervous wreck thinking of all that go wrong. I know this. So even though back in the day I seriously considered dating men who were wrong for me and contacting sperm banks, I chucked it all, came to my senses (with some help), and learned that's it okay to be a woman without a child, it's not that you're somehow unfulfilled, and really, I'm glad I made that choice. I know for others having a child is not just a biological need, but a societal and psychological need. Sometimes that's fine. Sometimes, that's unhealthy. Personally I think all people wanting to be parents (either naturally or not) should be screened. We test for drivers' licences. We conduct home visits to place pets. It's really rather a shame that there's no check and balance to keep unfit people from reproducing and raising children, as Big Brother and pro-eugenic as that may sound. But there's an awful lot of neglect and abuse out there that might be prevented at the same time, and lives and psyches could be saved by it. I'm just saying....

I've been up for about 45 minutes

I have opened the windows just a bit above the window boxes, just enough to get fresh air without making the plants up next to the window scream in terror (it was 43 degrees when I got up this morning), and I've been listening to Of Monsters and Men's My Head is an Animal. In fact, right now I'm listening to 'Your Bones', my favourite on the album.

I've eaten something and it's definitely time to start getting myself together and starting to work. I need to:

1. Pay my rent this morning.
2. Get some soda so I have some caffeine in me.
3. Set the DVR for 'Doctor Who'.
4. Work on the kitchen.
5. Work on the living/dining area.
6. Clean the bathroom.
7. Put laundry away.
8. Gather up new laundry.
9. Straighten up the bedroom.
10. Work on the book review.
11. Work on the game notes.
12. Get A to bring in the tubs/boxes in my car.
13. Go to the grocery store.
14. Watch something with YKWIA.

I'm not sure how much I can get done today. Some things, like rent, are priority. Which I should go get ready to do now, I think. Hope you have a great day.

Then there's this one, too

You can see both Earth and Moon.  Yay! (PS, the only alteration on the screenshots was that I mucked with a couple of the icons in the folders for the finances folder. You don't really need to know who I bank with, etc.)

I like to coordinate things

Especially purses and clothes,  but also desktops.  So both my laptop and my desktop at home,  as well as my desktop at work,  have the Milky Way theme for Windows,  and my phone has the Earth &  Moon Pro live wallpaper as well,  as seen on the screenshot here.  Funny,  I tried the 'I'm feeling lucky'  button on Google today and it took me to photos from the Hubble telescope.  I am in a starry mood this week.  I do love astronomy.  :)

Autumn's starting to go into full swing

It's 53 degrees outside after a high of 70-something on a rainy day, and tomorrow, while it's supposed to be sunny, won't be much higher than that, around 57 degrees Fahrenheit. It's windy and blustery. We haven't had rain in awhile, so the roads are slick with oil still.

I went over to a friend's to bring him creamer and fix him dinner. We watched an episode of 'Haven', one with a trouble where people were just incinerated. A particularly nasty one, that. YKWIA and I talked for some time and visited. Then I came on home.

Tomorrow the plan is to get up early, take some things back to the library, go pay my rent, and then come home and work on the house for awhile. A is going to help me get the things out of the car (some of which is theirs, old audio tapes I'm going to check). And we'll do the grocery run after that, once the car is clear. No really big plans other than visiting them and working on the stuff I need to.

But for now, I think I'm going to head on to bed. It's nearly midnight and I want to get up very early tomorrow morning, so I can work on the house, do the errands, and work on game notes and the book review that I still need to finish. Good night.

Interesting look at the origins of HIV

How AIDS first spread: Journey into night -- The early history of HIV has now been charted in detail

HIV/AIDS Origins Traced to Kinshasa

A new study finds that HIV/AIDS originated in the 1920s in the central African city of Kinshasa, in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Researchers say "a perfect storm" of factors "primed the HIV pandemic," including rail and river transport in 1960s Congo, a booming sex trade and the use of unsterilized needles in health clinics.

The international research team traced HIV's genetic history using archived samples of the virus's genetic code.

HIV was first recognized in the 1980s. Worldwide, some 75 million people have been infected with it. Around 36 million of them have died.

Take note, hotels and other establishments selling access to wi-fi

Marriott Slapped with $600k Penalty by FCC for Jamming Mobile Hotspots

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) received a complaint that this particular Marriott location was blocking Wi-Fi signals in conference rooms. Once guests would complain to the hotel about the lack of Wi-Fi reception, they would be offered optional high-speed internet services (both wired and wireless) at a cost of $250 to $1,000.

The FCC conducted a further investigation into that matter and confirmed that the hotel was in fact using jamming equipment so that it could upsell hotel guests. However, this practice is a big no-no, as blocking Wi-Fi signals violates Section 333 of the Communications Act.

This was at Marriott's Gaylord Opryland Hotel and Convention Center in Nashville, Tennessee. I'm an infrequent traveler, but when I do stay in a hotel, I expect to be able to use my mobile hotspot/tethering feature that comes with my cellular plan and phone, because really, there's no reason to pay for something I already should have access to. Plus, I've noticed my hotspot is usually more reliable than many 'public' wi-fi you find out there. Good that someone got caught. Maybe the rest of the business world will take note that jamming signals is, well, illegal, as well as just greedy and despicable.