WOW2 is a four-times-a-month sister blog to This Week in the War on Women. This edition covers trailblazing women and events from May 25 through May 31.
The next WOW2 edition will post on Saturday, June 4, 2022.
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.
Health-care decisions should be made by women, with their doctors and families – not politicians. Lawmakers should stop playing politics with women's health and lives.
– Cecile Richards, President of Planned Parenthood (2006-2018)
will post shortly, 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.
Though Caribbean Flamingos rarely find “true love,” they do stick together after mating “for the sake of the child.” They build the nest together, and then take turns sitting on the single egg laid by the female until their gray-white chick hatches.
The parents then take turns feeding their youngster by coughing-up a nutrient-rich red “milk” from a special part of their digestive tracts. This isn’t actually milk (flamingos don’t have mammary glands), but it’s packed with enough fat and protein to ensure their little chick is well-fed until he or she can handle solid food, such as crustaceans. This red liquid is what lends flamingos their distinctive deep pink coloring. So the chicks get pinker as they are fed, but all the moms and dads are paler by the end of the process.
After two weeks, the chicks join together in a large nursery creche, supervised by the parents, who continue to feed their offspring until they fledge, even though the chicks can feed themselves after they are about four-to-six weeks old. The parents recognize the distinctive cry of their particular chick, even in a nursery with thousands of other chicks. Flamingo chicks fledge at 9-to- 13 weeks, but are not sexually mature until three to six years of age.
The average lifespan for flamingos is 20 to 30 years. Caribbean flamingos are listed as “least concern” – widespread and abundant – by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).