Until I took this trip with NextTribe, my favorite all-women travel group, I always associated Vietnam with the ugly war of the 1960s and 70s. It hit my generation hard, affecting all those around me. You couldn’t avoid it; the nightly news always included horror stories, body counts, protests and counter-protests. It tore our country apart. I grieved over the loss of friends, wrote admission letters to get my brother into college, and helped others leave for Canada to avoid the draft. March 2023 commemorated 50 years since the war ended and this trip seemed like a good opportunity to reconcile my old, negative association with the modern reality.
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Women’s issues
Bold Women Rock “Day of the Dead” Trip
Several years ago, a friend told me about NextTribe, an online magazine for “Women Aging Boldly”. Without hesitation, I signed up for their newsletter. (They had me at “bold’!) While I enjoyed reading their articles, I didn’t pay much attention to their trips…until I saw their ad for Dìa de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) in San Miguel Allende, Mexico.
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I Could Have Been a Scientist
Today, the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was jointly awarded to Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman for their innovative work that led to the life-saving mRNA COVID vaccines. Ms. Karikó, a Hungarian-American biochemist and researcher at Penn Medicine is one of (now) 61 women who have received this award, while Dr. Weissman, a physician and researcher also at Penn Medicine, is one of over 890 male laureates. This wonderful announcement stirred my feminist passion and also reminded me of my lifelong interest in science. Maybe I could have been a scientist. If I was born 20 years later, could things have turned out differently?
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accidental goddess 