I started this post on 24th July and in true (bad) scanner style I didn’t hit “publish” and totally forgot about it. Whoops! Oh well better late than never, here’s to Sally Ride!
When I woke up this morning and heard the news that Sally Ride had died, I was devastated. Although I hadn’t thought about her since the 5th grade when we all had to do presentations on famous women and I acted in my friend’s Sally Ride skit, I nonetheless felt very keenly the loss of an amazing women. Whenever I’m working on a “play project” it’s always 3 weeks in that I start to lose the motivation and inspiration. It’s times like these when I need motivation more than ever so I thought I would dedicate a blog post to this amazingly inspiring woman!
“Mustang Sally” on a space mission
Sally Ride was a real boundary pusher when it came to proving that women were just as capable as men in the fields of science. She’s best known for being the first American woman in space but also still holds the record for being the youngest American in space. Sally held BAs in english and physics from Stanford (proving both her left and right brain were highly developed) as well as an MA and PhD from Stanford both in physics. So much for girls aren’t good at math and science! When Sally was a NASA astronaut in the early 80s she had to endure embarrassing questions from the press like “what’s it like to menstruate in space?” and “do you cry when things don’t go well?” To think that it was only 20 years ago that it was so strange for a woman to be an astronaut.
What really made me even more sad than Sally’s passing was the fact that Sally was in the closet about her sexuality during her lifetime. It was only upon her death that her partner of 27 years Tam O’ Shaughnessy was recognised as one of the family that Sally leaves behind. Given that Sally was such a private person, I understand Sally’s desire to stay in the closet during her lifetime. I don’t think that Sally would have wanted her sexuality to upstage all of the great work she was doing pushing the boundaries for women. So let’s not dwell on irrelevant points!
courtesy of the Telegraph
Here’s a few Sally quotes that I loved:
“All adventures, especially into new territory, are scary”
