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Dolly Parton (Singer/Songwriter/Actress) |
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 Dolly Rebecca Parton was born January 19, 1946, the fourth of 12 children.
She
is an American singer-songwriter, author, multi-instrumentalist, actress and philanthropist,
best-known for her work in country
music, her distinctive soprano voice, "big hair," voluptuous figure, flamboyant style and sometimes bawdy sense of humour.
In the five decades since her national-chart
début, she remains one of the most-successful female artists in the
history of the country genre.
She is known by many as 'The Queen of
Country Music,'
with twenty-five number-one singles,
and a record forty-one top-10 country albums.
She also has the distinction of having performed on a top-five country hit
in each of the last five decades
and is tied with Reba McEntire as the only country artists with
No. 1 singles in four consecutive decades.
Here she performs 9 to 5, from the movie of the same name, in which she starred with Jane
Fonda, Lily Tomlin, and Dabney Coleman :
Related links:
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Edith Widder (Marine Biologist) |
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 Edith Widder studies bioluminescence, the light chemically produced by many ocean organisms. She’s helped to design groundbreaking cameras for viewing this glowing world — and uses the startling results to help raise awareness of our marine environment.
Dr. Edith (Edie) Widder decided she wanted to be a marine biologist when she was just 11 years old. But by the time she was in graduate school studying neurobiology, she had essentially given up the idea of fulfilling her childhood dream because of the lack of job opportunities for scientists in these fields.
Then, a chance encounter with a colony of jellyfish led Widder to her own career path investigating bioluminescence, the generation of light by living things, and building the instruments to study it and other undersea phenomena.
One of the most remarkable pieces of equipment designed by Widder, who is now the president and senior scientist at Florida’s Ocean Research & Conservation Association, is the Eye-in-the-Sea, a unique, unobtrusive camera that sits on the sea bottom and records the never-before-seen behavior of marine animals.
Related Links:
Sylvia Earle's TED Prize Wish To Protect Our Oceans
The Mission Blue Voyage – a project of the TED Prize
TED Talks - Edith Widder On Bioluminescence
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If Silvana Did It, So Can I |
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Susan notes: This story from AWR fan Gaby Feile features Silvana Fucito. The information is from 2005 and 2009. I’ve tried to find updates on her story without any luck... Anyone have any more information on this fight for justice?
 Silvana Fucito is a towering example of how to stand up to the brutal crime syndicate that terrorizes Naples. The Neapolitan mob, the Camorra, picked on the wrong lady when it began demanding that Fucito and her husband, Gennaro Petrucci, cough up the notorious extortion payments known as the pizzo (from the Italian word for goatee, describing those who dip their beards in their neighbors’ soup) at the family paint store four years ago.
Like many, the couple first tried shooing the thugs away with excuses, free cans of paint and an occasional small “loan” that would never get repaid. But then in 2002, a pair of Camorra came into the store in the city’s rough San Giovanni neighborhood with a check to cash—for €100,000. One of the men flashed a pistol.
Petrucci did his best, amid escalating threats, to try to convince the Camorra bosses that the couple didn’t have that kind of money. Then one day, Fucito decided that she would come out from behind the counter to confront the unwelcome guests. “When I stepped out—a woman—and told them to leave, they couldn’t unload on me,” she recalls. “They couldn’t threaten me. That must have made them even more angry.”
Click here for the full story:
Time.com
Photo Credit:
Time.com
Related Links:
Silvana Fucito – Wikipedia (Italian)
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Roz Savage (Ocean Rower) |
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 Fearless ocean rower Roz Savage gave up her life as a management consultant to row across the Atlantic in 2005.
Her mission now is to row across the Pacific, from the West Coast to Australia, raising awareness of the world’s top environmental issues along the way.
A latecomer to the life of adventure, Roz Savage was previously a
management consultant and project manager at an investment bank, before
realizing in her mid-thirties that there might be more to life than a
steady income and a house in the suburbs.
In 2005, she competed in the
3,000-mile Atlantic Rowing Race, the first solo woman ever to compete in
that race and the sixth woman to row solo across an ocean. In 2008 she
became the first woman to row solo from California to Hawaii.
In 2009
she continued her Pacific bid by rowing from Hawaii to Kiribati. The
third and final stage of her Pacific row takes place in Spring 2010,
when she will attempt to row from Kiribati to Australia.
Related Links:
Sylvia Earle's TED Prize Wish To Protect Our Oceans
The Mission Blue Voyage – a project of the TED Prize
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Kristina Gjerde (Policy Advisor for the IUCN Global Marine Program) |
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 Kristina Gjerde is an expert on the law of the high seas — the vast areas of the sea and seabed that exist beyond any national jurisdiction. These places belong to the world; Gjerde’s work aims to help the world work together to protect them.
Kristina Gjerde is high seas policy advisor for the IUCN Global Marine Program.
Since late 2008, she has also been working with Census scientists and others to establish the Global Ocean Biodiversity Initiative.
She lives in Poland with her husband and son, but she enjoys every opportunity to dive into the ocean that is so much a part of her life.
Related Links:
Sylvia Earle's TED Prize Wish To Protect Our Oceans
The Mission Blue Voyage – a project of the TED Prize
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Sylvia Earle (Oceanographer, Explorer, Author, and Lecturer) |
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 Sylvia Earle, called “Her Deepness” by the New Yorker and the New
York Times, “Living Legend” by the Library of Congress, and “Hero for
the Planet” by Time, is an oceanographer, explorer, author, and lecturer
with a deep commitment to research through personal exploration.
Earle’s work has been at the frontier of deep ocean exploration for
four decades. Earle has led more than 50 expeditions worldwide involving
more than 6,000 hours underwater. As captain of the first all-female
team to live underwater, she and her fellow scientists received a
ticker-tape parade and White House reception upon their return to the
surface.
In 1979, Sylvia Earle walked untethered on the sea floor at a
lower depth than any other woman before or since. In the 1980s she
started the companies Deep Ocean Engineering and Deep Ocean Technologies
with engineer Graham Hawkes to design and build undersea vehicles that
allow scientists to work at previously inaccessible depths.
In the early
1990s, Dr. Earle served as Chief Scientist of the National
Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. At present she is
explorer-in-residence at the National Geographic Society.
Sylvia Earle is a dedicated advocate for the world’s oceans and the
creatures that live in them. Her voice speaks with wonder and amazement
at the glory of the oceans and with urgency to awaken the public from
its ignorance about the role the oceans plays in all of our lives and
the importance of maintaining their health.
Related Links:
Sylvia Earle's TED Prize Wish To Protect Our Oceans
The Mission Blue Voyage – a project of the TED Prize
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Dee Boersma (Biologist/Professor/Penguin Researcher) |
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 Dee Boersma is among 10 recipients of the Heinz Family Foundation awards
given to people whose achievements have fostered a cleaner, greener and
more sustainable world.
Boersma, a UW biology professor and holder of the Wadsworth Endowed
Chair in Conservation Science, is being honored for her extensive field
study of penguins and other sea birds to promote conservation and
understanding human impact on marine environments.
In an effort to
better communicate issues of the natural world to the public, she
launched Conservation Magazine, a publication for cutting-edge science
and smarter conservation (www.conservationmagazine.org).
For more than 25 years, she and her students, working with the Wildlife
Conservation Society, have studied Magellanic penguins at the Punta
Tombo reserve in Argentina.
She has dubbed the penguins "marine
sentinels" for their warning signs about the ocean environment. Her
recent work has shown that, because of climate change and other factors,
during the critical period of egg incubation, the penguins at Punta
Tombo must swim an average of 25 miles further in search of food than
they did just 10 years ago.
Related Links:
Sylvia Earle's TED Prize Wish To Protect Our Oceans
The Mission Blue Voyage – a project of the TED Prize
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