It's high time to be posting something...anything! Right? I'll start with news of a committee that I sit on. The President's Commission on the Status of Women, or PCSW. This is a committee based out of my local University, and every year during National Women's Week the PCSW selects from a pool of outstanding women from the community, faculty, staff, and students. This is my second year serving here and there is always alot of work to get things organized, but everything finally came to fruition the first week of March. Kathleen Dahl won for outstanding faculty and Sharon Mendoza won for outstanding citizen. Professor Dahl had quite a history of being the odd woman out and standing strong, so her success as this year's awardee was deserved. But Ms. Mendoza was the underdog, and won my heart.
It snows where I live in the Winter. Well, let's be real. It snows Fall, Winter and half of Spring to be modest. At the corner of our town square, every Friday early evening a small handful of people stand waving a blue flag with the words "peace" sewn in white. The thing is, on many of the blustery, freezing, evenings there is only one person standing waving her flag for peace. It is Ms. Mendoza.
That image, the one of her standing with her flag in some of the most frigid weather in Eastern Oregon, was the face of courage and bravery to me. And as I closed my eyes to contemplate on the cast of deserving nominees, Ms. Mendoza's lone figure wouldn't leave my thoughts and I placed my vote.
It's tough to pick an awardee out of a pool of very deserving women, but we (the committee) did good. Dawn