Day 93: They Say That A Hero Can Save Us

[anarchist_nomad]

Not a meme! Not a poll! Not an imaginary story! Just one simple question today, gentle readers:

Who are your heroes?

No particular reason for asking... or at least none beyond simple curiosity.

All comments screened for three days, just to avoid influencing anyone else answering...

Comments

[osprey-cat.livejournal.com]

Jane Goodall. She's inspired me so much since I was young. When I was a kid and people would ask the standard "what do you want to be when you grow up?", I answered "Jane Goodall, but with kitties." I've strayed from the research biology path a bit, but she's still a hero of mine. I've seen her twice in lectures and they were always fantastic.

As I delve into environmental and conservation education, people like Steve Irwin, Jeff Corwin and especially John Muir have also taken spots as personal heroes to me.

Non-professionally, I consider George Takei to be a bit of a hero as well. To be as well known as he is and to be such an active proponent of gay rights is so awesome. Also Joel Salatin and his family for helping to push the "beyond organic" and polyculture, local farms movement more into the mainstream.

That got long. ^^'

[jeneralist.livejournal.com]

I don't know who all my heroes are -- some of them are anonymous.

There was a photo in a magazine I saw about 10 years ago now, taken at a KKK march. The counter-demonstrators outnumbered the KKK guys, and things were getting ugly, with fists (and rocks) being thrown. The picture showed a black woman getting herself between a hooded KKK member and the person trying to beat him up. She's one of my heroes.

Luther Terry, as previously mentioned -- the surgeon general who quit smoking when he had a press conference about the report which concluded that smoking is really, really bad for health.

Doctors who have experimented on themselves to prove how disease really happens -- including Barry Marshall (association between H Pylori and gastritis, ulcers) and Joseph Goldberger (pellegra is not contagious, it's a nutritional deficiency).

Maybe more later, if this is locked for three days...

[winewiskeywomen.livejournal.com]

i have two heroes.
A single mom, Rachel Goede overcame serious legal troubles and depression to get two B.A.s; Italian and painting.
Dean Dempsey's mom and dad were addicts, he was raised by his migrant farmworker grandmother; he had no contact with his dad from age 2 to 23. Dean Dempsey earned his BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute where he also co-founded three campus groups and served on the Board of Trustees as the undergraduate representative. His photographic light boxes have been exhibited at several national and international galleries in North America, Europe and Asia. In 2009, Dean was awarded first place for self-portraiture by the International Photography Awards in Los Angeles. In addition, he is a 2009-10 recipient of En Foco’s New Work’s Photography Fellowship Awards#13 Exhibition in New York City.
Dean is a current nominee for SFMOMA's SECA award 2010.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

More or less in chronological order:

• Marie Curie
• Amelia Earhart
• Robert A. Heinlein
• Valentina Tereshkova
• Jeffrey Kraus (the person who taught me most of what I know about radio)
• Mister Spock and Montgomery Scott
• Pete Seeger
• You

(edited to change icon)

[bethanthepurple.livejournal.com]

My wife. She is SO good with her mouth-words, and that's just darn awesome.

Also the teacher who I assist. She's incredible.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Aphra Behn
Elizabeth Fry
Jehanne Romée la Pucelle (aka Joan of Arc)
Lili Elbe
Elizabeth Vigée Lebrun

But I'm leaving you to work out why in each case :o)

[darkfloweruk.livejournal.com]

Jeff Buckley is a hero: at a time when I could barely speak and be heard, he just opened up his mouth and sang, yelled and screamed so beautifully.

Whoppi Goldberg is a heroine: she looked like nothing else out there in the world of entertainment, but she just did her own thing. Plus she was absolutely killer at Guinan! Black aliens were pretty much unheard of before that role.

Bayard Rustin: what a scoundrel! Gay, black and outrageous at a time when it could seriously get you killed, he organised Martin Luther King's whole shebang. He promptly got dropped by King like a hot stone when his sexual orientation came out, but he was still going strong in his seventies. He also was a fan of Ghandi, went to India to learn more, and then proceeded to sleep his way around the sub-continent. Bayard Rustin was an activist/slut/good guy I can only hope to emulate...

[bunnypip.livejournal.com]

I always worry about setting someone up to be my hero because people are so multi faceted and fallible. I would be concerned to claim anyone well known as a hero because someone will always find dirt about them and even if they don't it's a huge burden to put on someone.

I do think that human beings are capable of great heroism though, in groups or individually... and according to their ability too, you know?

Shelley lost his place at Oxford and custody of his children because he wouldn't give up his atheist stance. My Aunt Clara kept her children and raised them alone after being widowed very young, in a world pre welfare state or NHS. Shelley had advantages that ordinary people don't have. People are doing heroic things every day.

[jeneralist.livejournal.com]

Dr. Semmelweis: he figured out that it was REALLY, REALLY DUMB to go straight from the anatomy lab to the delivery room without washing hands in between. He didn't understand why that was so -- Pasteur and the germ theory were most of a generation away -- but he saw what happened and changed his practice. For recommending something that saved women's lives, he was ridiculed. (Within 3 years he killed himself.)

Doctors need to be empiricists. You can know that something works before you know why it works.

[theentwife.livejournal.com]

St. Francis of Assisi, Theodore Roosevelt and firemen.

And Sylar. ;)


Persephone

[(Anonymous)]

My mum and Roza Luxembourg

[winewiskeywomen.livejournal.com]

IIRC my old friend, YOU were going to name yours; or am i mistaken?

[anarchist-nomad.livejournal.com]

Indeed! I shall get to it, my friend... and soon! Had meant to do so before now, but the insane volume of comments on my post about Swindon and The Magic Roundabout have been eating up the majority of my LJ time recently! Go figure!