Motorcycle Queen Of Miami

Honorary Contrarienne Bessie Stringfield.

During World War II, Bessie worked for the army as a civilian motorcycle dispatch rider. The only woman in her unit, she completed rigorous training maneuvers. She learned how to weave a makeshift bridge from rope and tree limbs to cross swamps, though she never had to do so in the line of duty. With a military crest on the front of her own blue Harley, a "61," she carried documents between domestic bases. 

The People's Economist

Elinor Ostrom has died. She was a contrarienne if ever there was one.

She was at first hired by the university, she said, because the political science department needed someone to teach a 7:30 a.m. class.

Previously.

Another Remarkable Woman

You've never heard of her because...do I need to ask? Okay, I'll concede, we've never hear of most major scientists.
Ruby Payne-Scott, definitely an Honorary Contrarienne.

During World War II, she was engaged in top secret work investigating radar. She was the expert on the detection of aircraft using PPI (Plan Position Indicator) displays. She was also at the time a member of the Communist Party^[5] and an early advocate for women's rights. The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) was interested in Payne-Scott and had a substantial file on her activities, with some distortions.^[

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As Important As Einstein, A Woman?

Come now, how could that be?

Some consider Noether’s theorem, as it is now called, as important as Einstein’s theory of relativity; it undergirds much of today’s vanguard research in physics, including the hunt for the almighty Higgs boson. 

One of my favorite NYT science writers, Natalie Angier, explains.

Henrietta Swan Leavitt

"In 1908, an unheralded and at the time unappreciated would-be astronomer, Henrietta Swan Leavitt, was employed as a 'computer' at the Harvard College Observatory. ('Computers' were women brought in to catalogue the brightness of stars recorded on the observatory's photographic plates; women were not allowed to use the observatory telescopes at the time.) Daughter of a Congregational minister and a descendant of the Pilgrims, Leavitt made an astounding discovery, which she further illuminated in 1912: she noticed that there was a regular relationship between the brightness of Cepheid stars and the period of their varieation. Therefore, if one could determine the distance to a single Cepheid of a known period (subsequently determined in 1913), then measuring the brightness of other Cepheids of the same period would allow one to determine the distance to these other stars!...Leavitt's discovery revolutionized the field. (Hubble himself, who was snubbed for the Nobel Prize, often said Leavitt's work deserved the prize, although he was sufficiently self-serving that he might have suggested it only because he would have been a natural contender to share the prize with her for his later work.) Paperwork had actually begun in the Royal Swedish Academy to nominate Leavitt for the Nobel in 1924 when it was learned that she had died of cancer three years earlier. By dint of his force of personality, knack for self-promotion, and skill as an observer, Hubble would become a household name, while Leavitt, alas, is known only to aficiaonados of the field."

Lawrence Krauss, A Universe From Nothing

Honorary Contrarienne

Alice Neel became a sort of feminist icon in the 1970's — and a frequent guest on the Johnny Carson show — after a lifetime of bohemian artistic obscurity, which her two children clearly still remembered with some bitterness long after her death and their long adult lives of success. Yet the two men retained her New York apartment after her death, and one of them used it to conduct business. They said they wanted to be near her.
I love her paintings and am thinking about getting a print of this.

There's no particular reason to feature Alice Neel today except I just finished watching the documentary about her done by her grandson Andrew Neel and have been thinking a lot about her, the sacrifices she made, the huge tragedies involved in her persistent pursuit of her art.
You can see a lot more of her portraits here.

And Spit On Their Graves

Frederica outlived 'em all. Oldest Honorary Contrarienne so far.

One of Frederica Sagor Maas' scripts launched Clara Bow. Maas eventually quit the movie business in disgust and much later wrote a scathing book about the industry.

And while we're at it, throw in Eve Arnold, too. Although she only lived to 99.

Atwood's Not Worried

So I'm not going to worry either. She knows more than I do, a lot more.
Shall we make her an honorary contrarienne? Let's.

What do you make of the need to perform one's life on Twitter and Facebook?
Margaret Atwood: It is just an extension of the diary. There is a wonderful book called The Assassin's Cloak which takes diary entries from all centuries and arranges them according to day of the year. So you can turn to January 1, and there will be an entry from Lord Byron, and there will be one from somebody during World War II, and there will be one from Brian Eno. And then on January 2, there will be somebody else.
People used to perform their lives this way to themselves in their diaries and through letters to other people. So, for me, anything that happens in social media is an extension of stuff we were already doing in some other way. It's all human communication. The form that most closely resembles the "tweet" is the telegram of old—which also was limited, because you paid by the letter. So they were also short communications very rapidly sent.
All of these things, the postal service, et cetera, they're all improvements or modernizations of things that already existed earlier in some other form. Even African tribal drums, for instance, could send very complex messages over great distances. They were very rapid, they were very well-worked out, and communications could go like wildfire using that medium of communication.
All of this stuff is what we do now, but it's not different in nature from what we have always done, which is communicate with one another, send messages to one another, and perform our lives. We've been doing that for a long time.

The White Mouse

The most decorated female in World War II, Nancy Wake worked behind enemy lines in France and with the French Resistance. She was the Gestapo's most wanted. She died on Sunday in Australia, where she grew up.

She initially refused offers of decorations from Australia saying "The last time there was a suggestion of that I told the government they could stick their medals where the monkey stuck his nuts. The thing is if they gave me a medal now, it wouldn't be love so I don't want anything from them".

It's been a tough few days for Honorary Contrariennes.

I Well Remember Bernadine Healy

Long a leader in women's health, her star lost some luster when, as head of the Red Cross during 9/11, the organization was caught using some of those donations for other purposes.
I did not know until today that she had also been entangled in the vaccine/autism controversy.
Maybe it was the brain cancer.

Honorary Contrarienne

My fitness mentor, Hilary Metzger, celebrates Rhody Fest each year by walking in the 7.5-mile marathon.
This year, she won the coveted "Words Per Mile" trophy, an honor she devised and awarded to herself. I believe the established record is something in the neighborhood of 7,000 words total.

Inspired, I attempted to top my personal best record of most baby carrots miniature Tootsie Rolls consumed on the 4-mile drive home from the grocery store and, of course, beat myself. As usual.

Frist!

Georgia Boscolo, the 24-year-old daughter of a gondolier, becomes the first Venetian gondoliera in 900 years.

Honorary Contrarienne? What Say You?

Tilda Swinton Julia Gillard becomes prime minister of New Zealand Australia.

Warren Buffett: Honorary Contrarienne?

Fast forward to about 1:44. Nuff said.