Risks of Running

             I am a runner.  I started running several years ago to get into better shape but it has turned into an activity I look forward to each day.  I also enjoy reading books about other runners and discovered Shanti Sosiendki’s book Women Who Run.  As I read the introduction, I was startled to learn that it has only been just over 35 years that women have been allowed to legally run in marathons in the United States because it was believed that if a woman ran that far her uterus would fall out.  As a result it was not until 1984 that the Olympics even had a marathon event for women (Sosienski, xix).  Today tens of thousands of women run in marathons every year  - and not one of them has lost their uterus.

            It is interesting to look back and see how limits have been put on women throughout history.  Another example of false information stopping women from being more a part of the world is the story of the amazing woman, Henrietta Swan Leavitt.  Henrietta lived in the 1800s when it was believed that our Milky Way galaxy was the center of the universe and the most significant object in it.   However, during this time larger telescopes began to look further into the heavens finding more accurate information.  One of these larger telescopes was located at the Harvard College Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This telescope took photographic negatives of the night sky that were created as the telescope was aimed into the heavens and “its light focused onto a large glass plate coated on one side with light-sensitive emulsion” (Johnson, 10).  Henrietta was employed at the Harvard Observatory as a human computer, and it was her job to count and study the stars on these photographic plates.  Miss Leavitt and other women spent the day examining the tiny dark dots on the white background of space, and recording their observations in a ledger book.

                  Previous to her employment at the Harvard Observatory, Miss Leavitt attended Oberlin College and Radcliffe Academy taking various courses covering a wide range of fields of study.  Shortly before her twenty-fourth birthday in 1892, she graduated with a certificate saying she had completed a number of curriculum courses.  If she had been a man during this era, the courses she successfully completed would have earned her a Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard.

            These women or human computers were not allowed to actually view the sky with the telescope at Harvard Observatory because it was “assumed that night-long vigils in a frigid dome required a masculine physique” (Center for the History of Physics).  However, this did not stop Miss Leavitt from contributing to the field of astronomy.

            As Miss Leavitt spent hours studying the star patterns on the pieces of glass, she eventually discovered a way to measure the distances of far away objects in the universe. She determined that there was a relationship between the brightness of variable stars or Cepheids, (those who change in brightness) and how long they remained bright.  Her discovery meant that Cepheids could be used as “cosmic measuring posts” for objects far beyond our solar system to determine how far away they actually were from the Earth.

            It is interesting to note that while Miss Leavitt made her “universe changing discovery” by studying photographic plates, she was able to do more to advance astronomy than some of the male astronomers of that era. 

            An example of this is the astronomer William H. Pickering, brother of Edward Pickering, the director of the Harvard College Observatory.  William had the luxury of looking at any time, through one of the best telescopes available; however, his theories were not as notable as Miss Leavitt’s.  He had developed an assumption that the dark patches on the Moon were due to seasonal swarms of migrating insects (Bryson, 163).

            In 1912 Miss Leavitt’s findings were published in a Harvard Circular under the name of the director of the Harvard Observatory, Edward Pickering.

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Bryson, Bill.  A Short History of Nearly Everything.  Random House, New York, 2005.

Center for History of Physics. Women in Astronomy. http://www.aip.org/history/cosmology/ideas/island.html “Island Universes”. (accessed 11 September 2009).

Johnson, George. Miss Leavitt’s Stars. W.W Norton & Company, Inc., 2006.

Shanti Sosienski, Women Who Run (California: Seal Press, 2006).

An Old Wooden Barrel

            History is all around us; you just need to take the time to find out what is there.  I went on a hike with a group to the Cascadia Indian Caves with an Oregon archeologist, Tony Farque as our guide.  Tony has spent years studying the Indians of the area and knows the history of many places in the Cascade Mountains.  As we began our hike, we left a parking lot and walked through a grassy meadow and before long, he had stopped us and explained that once right over by a stand of trees to our left was one of the first hotels in the area.  He told of its builders, dealings and the sad fact that it burned to the ground while still in business.  Then he said something that caught my attention, “So as you can see, there is history everywhere you go.”

            There really are things that happened years ago everywhere around where we live each day, we just need to know where to look in order to find them.  My husband and I run on an old railroad grade almost every day – we call it the Hinterland.  It is a beautiful trail that other people use as well and the magnificence of this spot simply takes you in as you gradually ascend the wide, flatten trail up to the top of the hill.  The Hinterland is a diverse spot, filled with golden autumn leaves in the fall, white trillium in the spring and deer fern in the summer.  Many people enjoy this ever-changing scene but most miss something that is also there – the history of the trail.

            The sides of this path are filled with trees, ferns, blackberries and flowers and if you know where to look, part of the way up the long hill is a partially covered old barrel made of wooden slats.  It isn’t much to look at and is more visible in the autumn as the leaves fall from the trees and the blackberries recede a bit.  You have to know where to look to find it but it is a reminder to me that there is history all around us each day.  This trail did not begin simply as a nice place to walk and enjoy nature, it started as a train track for a steam engine that was loaded with logs each day bringing them from the Dollar Station Logging Camp, along the Calapooia River.  The slatted barrel is near some natural springs in the area so it would easily fill, making it a good location for the tired steam engine to stop, refill its water supply and head back up the slow incline to the top of the mountain.  Each time I run by this barrel I make an effort to glance at it because it reminds me that there were people and events that happened here long before I came around and that they are part of this landscape, just as I am part of it now.