Trailblazers

I share my birthday with some pretty cool people, including Galileo and Susan B. Anthony. (Also, Jo Miller, a poker player, and a girl I went to high school with--all cool in their own right.) Most of you know Galileo, he who the Church condemned for daring to support the theory that the Sun and not the Earth was at the center of the universe. He has been hailed as being responsible for modern science, and is enshrined in pop culture by both Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody and in the song Galileo by the Indigo Girls. If Queen sings about you, I think that makes you cool.

Most Americans know, or should know, Susan B. Anthony. A Quaker who campaigned for various social justice causes, the most well-known being Women's Suffrage in America. Famously working with Elizabeth Cady Stanton they created the organisation that would become the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), and lobbied tirelessly for a constitutional amendment. Susan B. Anthony was once arrested for voting; she never paid the fine. Susan B. Anthony was immortalized on a US dollar coin, which is pretty darn cool.

Galileo and Susan B. Anthony were long dead by the time they got their justly deserved comeuppance. In the 1990s, the Church apologised for making Galileo recant what was later found out to be basically the truth, and in 1920 the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, using the original language written by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Their largest legacy is that they helped to create a new world of sorts. One where scientific study and reason was the norm over religious mania. One where women were allowed to exercise a basic democratic right that helps to ensure their rights as citizens. I would wager to say that in the 21st century we must continue to fight for both principles.

I make no claims on ever getting into a pop song, or becoming money, but I do hope that some of what I do can make a difference. Each year on February 15th, I am inspired of these two trailblazers that came before me, and hope that I can blaze a small trail of my own.