Women have surfed some of the biggest and scariest waves known to man.
They have challenged the towering peaks at the break called Mavericks in
northern California. They have elbowed into the crowded wave lineup on
Hawaii’s North Shore.
They have pulled into heavily loaded barrels of
water at Teahupoo in Tahiti. But they had never had their own big wave
contest — until Wednesday.
With a smattering of locals and members of the news media, flocks of
pelicans, a spouting gray whale and some of the best male riders in the
world looking on along the central Oregon coast, three women charged
down 20- to 25-foot-high waves in the first female heat of the Nelscott Reef Big Wave Classic, one of five stops on the male-dominated Big Wave World Tour.
Fittingly, Keala Kennelly, a 32-year-old from Hawaii, took the first
drop down a wave and went on to win the Top Chick trophy over Savannah
Shaughnessy of California and Mercedes Maidana of Argentina in what was a
casual competition on a rare clear November day.
Update January 23, 2011: The petition and letter-writing campaign referred to below were partially successful. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger granted clemency on January 2,
2011, to Sara Kruzan, a woman who, at the age of 16, shot dead George
Gilbert Howard, her alleged pimp. Schwarzenegger commuted Kruzan’s life
sentence without the possibility of parole to life to 25 years to life
in prison with the possibility of parole, saying that her life sentence
was “excessive." She is still in jail.
Update (November 2010): you are invited to help free Sara Kruzan who has spent 16 years in a US prison for the murder of her pimp, who molested and prostituted her from the age of 13. Click here to sign one such petition. Residents of USA can send a letter to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger here.
Susan notes (November 2009): this moral dilemma leaves me torn: a young girl kills the ruthless and manipulative pimp who has entrapped and abused her. She is then sentenced to life in prison without parole for his murder. I'm 100% against violence and killing; and yet, somehow, something doesn't seem right... It feels to me like she has gone from one prison to another...
Sara Kruzan was 11 years old, a middle school student from
Riverside, California, when she met a man -- he called himself GG -- who
was almost three times her age. GG took her under his wing; he would
buy her gifts, take her and her friends rollerskating. "He was like a
father figure," she recalls in the video below.
Despite suffering severe bouts of depression as a child, until then,
Kruzan was a good student, an "overachiever" in her words. But her
mother was abusive and addicted to drugs; as for her father, she had
only met him a couple of times. So, more and more, GG filled in...
Women rock. In every sense of the word. Each and every one of us is
special in her own way. And all of us are connected, through shared
experience and common challenges. AWR is an online oasis for amazing women (and those who appreciate
them).
Small-scale, hand-cranked generators that power lights and radios are practical in places where there’s no electricity.
But they’re not a whole lot of fun. Four undergraduate students at Harvard University decided to harvest the kinetic energy of soccer, the world’s most popular sport, instead.
After just 15 minutes of play, their sOccket ball could provide families in sub-Saharan Africa—where less than 25 percent of the population has access to reliable electricity—with 3 hours of LED light, a clean, efficient alternative to kerosene lamps.
Tiny, sun-soaked Khodi on the western coast of India’s Gujarat state is the kind of village where cattle still plough the fields and women fill clay pots with water from the village well.
In the past few years, however, the town has been changing: Thatched mud huts are slowly giving way to sturdy, single-story concrete blocks; farmers conduct their business on cellphones. The state buses, which until a decade ago were only filled with men, are now crammed with women. Enrollment in the local school has soared.
These changes can be attributed partly to India’s recent economic liberalization, which has raised incomes and brought unprecedented growth across the country. But in Khodi, there’s another, more unlikely contributor: the soaring local literacy rate, courtesy of music videos.
Women have surfed some of the biggest and scariest waves known to man.
They have challenged the towering peaks at the break called Mavericks in
northern California. They have elbowed into the crowded wave lineup on
Hawaii’s North Shore.
Small-scale, hand-cranked generators that power lights and radios are practical in places where there’s no electricity.
Tiny, sun-soaked Khodi on the western coast of India’s Gujarat state is the kind of village where cattle still plough the fields and women fill clay pots with water from the village well.