Gratitude Monday: Strong women

On this day in 1906, Grace Brewster Murray was born in New York City. An extremely curious child, at age seven she took apart seven alarm clocks to see how they worked; she would have kept on, but her mother caught her. That curiosity led her to a pioneering career in computer science, where—among other things—she developed the compiler and pushed the idea of developing English-based programming languages rather than machine-based ones.

As Grace Hopper (the husband lasted only 15 years, but she kept his surname) she retired from the US Navy three times before they quit calling her back to active duty. I watched her final retirement ceremony on TV in 1986. It was held on the USS Constitution and it probably made the evening news because she was such an anomaly—a female Rear Admiral who’d been working years beyond the Navy’s mandatory retirement by Congressional fiat and because the service bloody needed her expertise. She went on to become a consultant for DEC, and died in Arlington, Va., in 1992. (For a year, I lived near the apartment block that was her last residence. They’ve turned the grass in front of the building into Grace Hopper Park.

I’m grateful today for the example of Grace Hopper, for her unapologetic brilliance, her strength her biting wit, and her utterly no-bullshit attitude.

I sometimes wonder about Mary’s strength, as she journeyed to Bethlehem. I mean—it’s a lot to take in, a teenager (at least that’s the supposition) being visited by an archangel who announces she’s been chosen to bear the son of God. Then being pregnant—no one bothers to tell us what the pregnancy was like, but there’s no reason to imagine that carrying the Messiah is any different from carrying an ordinary baby. So, morning sickness, frequent peeing, fatigue, hormonal extremes.

Plus, now she’s on this freaking journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem—160km, on a donkey, in your ninth month, just so you and your husband can be counted in the census. (Thanks, Caesar!) First pregnancy—she had to be anxious; she’d have known of other women who had difficult births, maybe some who died. Gabriel, in the Annunciation, made no mention of an easy birth. And he’s representing the same God who told Abraham to kill his son Isaac and only pulled back at the last minute—“Ha, ha, just joking. You can keep the kid.”

So, what kind of strength did it take to be in the final trimester of her first pregnancy, traveling to a strange town, with a husband who presumably knows nothing about childbirth; to be so young and so out of her element in every respect? We do not know, because none of the New Testament writers could be arsed to tell us.

Okay. Today’s Advent music is a Nordic take on one I’ve given you before “Maria Var Ei Møy Så Ren” describes a different trip, the one Mary took early in her pregnancy to visit her cousin Anne, who was also experiencing an unexpected pregnancy. (She was considered much to old to conceive; her son would be John the Baptist.) Evidently the road to Anne’s house took Mary through a thorny wood.

The artist is Marian Aas Hansen, a Norwegian singer. And I’m sorry (not sorry), but the picture on the cover of this album reminds me of the Leverage episode when the team was pulling off a job in Nashville and Parker was playing a Björk-like diva. This clip does not do the kookiness justice, but it’s apparently the only one on the web:

I think Grace Hopper would have found it amusing.