Narrators for the Story of My Life

by John O'Keefe-Odom

AgXphoto.info

I woke up this morning wondering who we should nominate to do the voice-overs for the story of my life. I know many of you were wondering.

Being a dynamic thinker and noble adventurer, I always have to keep one eye on posterity. That includes who will narrate the movie about my life, after I'm dead and gone.

Well, quick up on the list were some women who had been on TV before: Dee Dee Myers, Mika Brzezinski and a scientist who I think was Doctor Lisa Kaltenegger, a Harvard University astronomer.

All three of those people got my attention for thinking before they started talking. I also notice that when they don't have something to say, they are quiet. Those three avoid the key problem of blathering away on TV about nothing. Like 'em or not, they're thinking chicks, so they make the list of narrators.

Well, while I was tinkering around with trying to figure out if the person whom I'd seen on television was Dr. Kaltenegger or not, I ran across these ridiculous lists of women scientists.

I say ridiculous because most of these lists were of completely fake, totally fictitious, female scientists. Apparently, a theatrical facsimile of a thinking female is preferable to some of the women who've already thought up something! At least when it comes to putting them on TV.

So, to fix this, I decided to add some of these women astronauts to my list of people who are welcome to narrate the story of my life.

I don't care if they can't read a Space Shuttle index card cheat sheet aloud well enough to make it to the morning shows on the local UHF station.

What made the list a touch more ridiculous was that

• I had never heard of any of these people
• The list of female astronauts was particularly long
• Their accomplishments were intense in thought and broad in scope

And it took a whole 35 seconds to scroll down the list (I didn't get even halfway through the alphabet before their accolades started to wear me out) and pick some of them at random. That's right: random.

It turns out that you can't swing Katie Couric's lip gloss applicator stick without marking up one of these ladies' Ph.D's in Something Complicated.

Most of these ladies have spent more time flying through space in a week than most Hollywood starlets have spent on TV in a lifetime.

It turns out that many of them have been Chemists, have had military careers (many are Colonels and Generals), and have somehow ended up associated with labs and observatories in space (which made me wonder what the hell everyone else is doing up there).

Here they are:

Eileen Collins. Ancestral home from the County Cork in Ireland, not too far from where the O'Keefe's hail from. First female Space Shuttle Commander. She had two previous missions which involved piloting the Space Shuttle, both involved rendezvous with the space station Mir.

Collins seems to be one of those astronauts who ends up going into space because she's on The Pilot track. Eventually those people try skipping the "air" portion of aircraft and end up flying spaceships. Collins not only flies, but has been put in charge of the whole thing. Space Shuttle Commander.

Cady Coleman. Chemist. USAF. Scheduled to hit the star chart in 2010. She plays in a band, married a guy who's into art glass and she knows enough about Chem to explain this stuff to you better than I could.

Nancy J. Currie. US Army Colonel. Helicopter pilot. Four time astronaut.

Just think on that a second. Apparently her hobbies include flying complicated machines really, really fast.

Nancy Davis. Engineer. Three shuttle missions. Operated a spacelab. Degrees from Georgia, Auburn and Alabama. We're confident that football season allegiances are a problem for her, but if anybody can figure that out, she probably can. I liked it that her education was laced with land grant university credentials. You don't have to be born with a silver spoon in your mouth to make it to the Space Shuttle. Good going, Nancy.

Anna Lee Fisher, M.D. Chemist. First mom in space. Apparently her hobbies include emergency medicine. Like a lot of these chemists, she's studied X-rays and crystals quite a bit. Doc Fisher was one of the people who developed and tested the robotic arm on the Space Shuttle. Without that robot arm, they wouldn't have gotten much done with those satellites.

Linda Maxine Godwin. This one got my attention because she was from Cape Girardeau. Some years ago, I worked a jobsite out there. I was at the airport. It turns out Rush Limbaugh was from Cape Girardeau. They named a street after him. It's one of the access roads on the airport. The way one of the locals told the story to me: he landed in a private jet, cut the ribbon on the street named after him, and then immediately got back on his plane and left town.

Linda Godwin has walked in space twice. Four shuttle missions. A whole lotta science experiments.

Two spacewalks. Cape Girardeau, how about naming a street after her?

Major General Susan J. Helms, USAF. Eight hour spacewalk, which set a record for duration. She's flown on four different Space Shuttles and the International Space Station. You might notice she's a general officer.

General officers sure do make good expert explainers on TV shows. I wonder when we're going to see female astronaut Major General Helms on TV telling us all about space.

Guessing from her resume, with 30 different airframe types under her belt, General Helms': turn-ons include "anything supersonic" and her turn-offs are "running out of oxygen."

If you ever wondered what it'd be like to have a woman with her finger on the nuclear button, count Helms in. How about "in" as "in charge" of like, Space Command, which would be just about everything the US Air Force decides to put into, or take out of, space.

Since she's been at it for a while now, you can consider her the Chief Nuker of menstrual punch lines about putting women in charge of lots of powerful stuff.

Historically, on the serious side, being a female commander of USAF Space Command may make her one of the most important women to ever live.

Millie Elizabeth Hughes-Fulford. This one's my favorite. Chemist and first female payload specialist. US Army Major (Medical Corps). This chemist figured out why astronauts undergo certain types of health effects when they fly through space. She had to do a lot of studying about blood, bones and genetics in order to come up with a sound answer.

Somebody should give these chicks a little more time on the Tube. They apparently think more than most people on TV. Think on that next time women are on TV for makeup commercials instead of space flight or other thinking stuff.

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