“We especially need imagination in science. It is not all logic, nor all mathematics, but is somewhat beauty and poetry.

– Maria Mitchell,  the first American woman professional astronomer

WOW2  is a   four-times-a-month  sister blog to   This Week in the War on Women. This edition covers stories from  October 1 through October 7.

The next installment of WOW2 will be on Saturday, October 8, 2022.

I became a part of the struggle … for better working conditions, for more pay, for improvements in the deplorable conditions of women workers, Negro workers, Mexican workers. Sometimes the struggle was mean.  We fought in the midst of KKK terror. We were jailed for daring to strike. We fought desperately for the right to organize!

– Luisa Moreno, Guatemalan-born American labor organizer

“It was the 31st of August in 1962 that eighteen of us traveled twenty-six miles to the county courthouse in Indianola to try to register to become first-class citizens. We was met in Indianola by policemen, Highway Patrolmen,and they only allowed two of us in to take the literacy test at the time.”

– Fannie Lou Hamer , Mississippi voting rights crusader

The purpose of WOW2 is to learn about and honor women of achievement, including many who’ve been ignored or marginalized in most of the history books, and to mark moments in women’s history. It also serves as a reference archive of women’s history. There are so many more phenomenal women than I ever dreamed of finding, and all too often their stories are almost unknown, even to feminists and scholars.

These trailblazers have a lot to teach us about persistence in the face of overwhelming odds. I hope you will find reclaiming our past as much of an inspiration as I do.

just posted, so be sure  to go there next, and catch  up on the latest dispatches from the frontlines:

Many, many thanks to  libera nos,  intrepid  Assistant Editor of WOW2. Any remaining mistakes are either mine, or uncaught computer glitches in transferring the data from his emails to DK5. And much thanks to  wow2lib,  WOW2’s Librarian Emeritus.

Note: All images and audios are  below  the person or event to which they refer.

The Aardvark is a solitary, nocturnal, long-snouted, burrowing South African mammal, with long ears, commonly known for eating ants and termites. Aardvarks live in African savannas, open grasslands, woodlands, and scrub. Aardvarks are afrotheres, a clade (organisms believed to have evolved from a common ancestor) which also includes elephants, manatees, and hyraxes.

Aardvarks spend the daylight hours in their deep burrows for protection and to avoid the heat. They dig the burrows with their long claws. When threatened, an aardvark can dig a hole and cover itself up in about ten minutes, and they can also use their large claws for protection. Aardvarks abandon old burrows and dig new ones frequently, and the old dens are then used as dens used by other species

They pair only during the breeding season. After a gestation period of seven months, one cub is born during May–July. At birth, the cub has already has claws, but its ears are flaccid and their skin very wrinkled. It will nurse off each of the mother’s teats in succession. After two weeks, the folds of skin disappear and after three weeks, the ears can be held upright. After 5–6 weeks, body hair starts growing.

The cub is able to leave the burrow with its mother after two weeks, begins eating termites at 9 weeks, and is weaned between 12 and 16 weeks. At six months, it is able to dig its own burrows, but it will often remain with the mother until the next mating season. It is sexually mature from about two years of age.

Though the number of aardvarks is believed to be declining, they are not yet considered endangered.​​​​​