Chico Women's Club

12/25/2025

Merry Christmas!

Artist Vivian Hansen

12/22/2025

12/09/2025

She discovered one of the most important phenomena in astronomy. The Nobel Prize went to her male supervisor. Her response changed everything.
This is Jocelyn Bell Burnell—and what she did after being denied the Nobel Prize matters more than the prize itself.
In 1967, Jocelyn Bell was 24 years old, working on her PhD at Cambridge University. Her job was tedious beyond description: analyzing miles and miles of radio telescope printouts—paper charts covered in squiggly lines representing radio signals from space.
Most of it was noise. Static. Background radiation. The occasional interference from earthly sources.
Day after day, Jocelyn examined these charts, looking for... anything unusual.
Then, in November 1967, she saw something that made her stop.
A tiny blip. A signal. Perfectly regular. Repeating every 1.3373 seconds with clockwork precision.
She showed it to her supervisor, Antony Hewish. At first, they thought it was equipment error. They checked the telescope. They checked the timing systems. Everything was working perfectly.
The signal was real.
But what was it?
They observed more carefully. The signal appeared at the same location in the sky every night, moving with the stars—proof it was coming from deep space, not Earth.
The team started joking about "Little Green Men"—maybe it was an alien civilization sending signals. They even nicknamed it LGM-1.
But Jocelyn kept analyzing. And she found another one. Then another. Then another.
Four separate signals. All perfectly timed. All from different locations in space.
Aliens sending coordinated signals from multiple star systems seemed unlikely. There had to be a natural explanation.
Jocelyn proposed what the signals really were: pulsars—rapidly rotating neutron stars, the collapsed cores of massive stars that had exploded as supernovas. These incredibly dense objects (a teaspoon of neutron star material would weigh a billion tons) spun at tremendous speeds, emitting beams of radio waves like cosmic lighthouses.
It was one of the most important astronomical discoveries of the 20th century.
Pulsars confirmed predictions about what happened to massive stars after they died. They provided new tools for studying gravity, space-time, and the behavior of matter under extreme conditions. They opened entirely new fields of research.
The scientific world was electrified.
Papers were published. Conferences were held. The discovery made headlines worldwide.
Then, in 1974, the Nobel Prize in Physics was announced.
It was awarded for the discovery of pulsars.
To Antony Hewish, Jocelyn's supervisor.
And to Martin Ryle, who'd built the radio telescope.
Jocelyn Bell, the person who'd actually discovered pulsars—who'd noticed the anomaly, investigated it, and identified what it meant—was not included.
The scientific community erupted in controversy. Prominent astronomers, including Fred Hoyle, publicly criticized the decision. How could the Nobel Committee give the prize to the supervisor while ignoring the graduate student who'd made the actual discovery?
It seemed like a clear case of discrimination. A young woman doing the work while older men received the recognition.
Jocelyn's response?
She didn't complain publicly. She didn't demand justice. She didn't let bitterness define her.
"I believe it would demean Nobel Prizes if they were awarded to research students, except in very exceptional cases, and I do not believe this is one of them," she said at the time.
Later, she reflected more honestly: she acknowledged the Nobel snub hurt, but she refused to let it consume her.
Instead, Jocelyn Bell Burnell kept working.
She became one of the world's leading astrophysicists. She taught generations of students. She mentored young scientists, especially women and minorities entering fields where they were dramatically underrepresented.
She served as president of the Royal Astronomical Society, president of the Institute of Physics, and held positions at numerous prestigious institutions.
She made the universe understandable to anyone willing to listen—writing, lecturing, advocating for science education and accessibility.
And through it all, she remained gracious about the Nobel Prize that should have been hers.
Then, in 2018—51 years after her discovery—something remarkable happened.
Jocelyn Bell Burnell received the Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. The prize recognized her pulsar discovery and her lifetime contributions to astrophysics.
The award: $3 million (approximately £2.3 million).
It was one of the largest scientific prizes ever awarded. It was international recognition. It was vindication, decades overdue.
Jocelyn Bell Burnell donated every single penny.
She established a fund specifically to support physics students from underrepresented groups: women, ethnic minorities, and refugees—people who faced the same barriers she'd encountered, or worse.
"I don't want or need the money myself," she explained, "and it seemed to me that this was perhaps the best use I could put it to."
Think about that.
After being denied the Nobel Prize—after watching men take credit for her work—after five decades of being held up as the example of injustice in science—she received millions of dollars in recognition.
And she gave it all away to help others.
That's not just grace. That's transformative leadership.
Because Jocelyn Bell Burnell understood something profound: individual recognition fades, but creating opportunities for others creates lasting change.
The Nobel Prize she never received is now a historical footnote—an embarrassment to the Nobel Committee, a reminder of how the scientific establishment overlooked women's contributions.
But the scholarships she funded? Those will support dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of students who might otherwise never have the chance to study physics. Students who will make their own discoveries. Who will become the next generation of scientists asking questions about the universe.
Jocelyn Bell Burnell never needed a medal to prove her brilliance. Her discovery spoke for itself. Her grace under injustice became its own kind of light—one that continues to guide everyone who dares to ask questions, even when the world isn't ready to hear the answers.
Today, Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell (she was made a Dame in 2007) is in her eighties. She continues advocating for diversity in science, mentoring young researchers, and speaking about the importance of curiosity and persistence.
Her legacy isn't the Nobel Prize she was denied.
It's the pulsars she discovered, still helping us understand the universe.
It's the students she mentored, now making their own contributions to science.
It's the scholarships she funded, opening doors for people who look like her—and people who don't.
It's the example she set: that dignity, generosity, and commitment to others matter more than individual recognition.
She discovered one of the most important phenomena in astronomy at age 24.
The Nobel Prize went to her male supervisor.
Her response? Keep working. Keep teaching. Keep discovering. And when recognition finally came, give it away to help others.
Because recognition fades.

12/04/2025

From the Curiosity Curator:

They rejected her scientific research because she was a woman—so she wrote children's books and bought 4,000 acres of wilderness to prove them all wrong.
Her name was Beatrix Potter. And the world tried very hard to make her invisible.
Born in 1866 into wealthy Victorian society, Beatrix was expected to become exactly what her world demanded: decorative, obedient, intellectually docile. Marry well. Fade quietly into domesticity.
But Beatrix had other plans.
While other girls learned embroidery and piano, Beatrix collected insects, sketched animals with scientific precision, and studied fungi with an intensity that alarmed her parents.
She didn't just draw mushrooms—she dissected them, documented them, theorized about them with meticulous detail.
By the 1890s, Beatrix had developed a revolutionary theory: that lichens were not a single organism, but a symbiotic relationship between fungi and algae—two completely different life forms living together. This idea was decades ahead of mainstream understanding.
In 1897, armed with rigorous research and beautifully detailed illustrations, Beatrix prepared a scientific paper: "On the Germination of the Spores of Agaricineae."
She submitted it to the Linnean Society of London—the most prestigious scientific institution in Britain.
The rejection was swift and absolute.
Not because her science was flawed. Not because her research lacked rigor.
But because she was a woman.
Women weren't allowed to attend Linnean Society meetings. She couldn't present her own work. Couldn't defend her findings. Her uncle had to read her paper on her behalf—and even then, it was dismissed. Ignored. Buried.
The doors to science were locked, and no amount of brilliance could open them.
Beatrix could have given up. Countless women did.
Instead, she pivoted.
If the scientific establishment wouldn't let her in through the front door, she'd build her own door—through children's literature.
In 1902, Beatrix Potter published "The Tale of Peter Rabbit."
It became an instant sensation.
Over the next two decades, she wrote and illustrated 23 books featuring animals rendered with scientific precision. Every whisker, every leaf, every landscape was based on direct, meticulous observation.
Her stories were fairy tales, yes—but they were also natural history lessons disguised as children's entertainment.
She became one of England's most successful authors, beloved by millions.
And here's where the story becomes even more extraordinary: Beatrix used her fortune not for luxury, but for conservation.
She bought thousands of acres in England's Lake District—farms, forests, meadows. She became a pioneering conservationist decades before environmentalism was mainstream.
She wasn't just writing about nature. She was saving it.
When Beatrix Potter died in 1943 at age 77, she bequeathed over 4,000 acres to the National Trust, ensuring those habitats would be protected forever.
Those lands remain preserved today—living monuments to her vision.
But the story doesn't end there.
In 1997—54 years after her death—the Linnean Society of London issued a formal, public apology for rejecting Beatrix Potter's scientific work solely because of her gender.
They admitted what history had already proven: she was right. Her theory about lichen symbiosis was confirmed by modern science. Her research was groundbreaking. Her exclusion was profound injustice.
Today, Beatrix Potter's scientific illustrations are housed in prestigious institutions. Scholars study her mycological drawings not as curiosities, but as legitimate scientific documentation.
She was more than a children's author.
She was a self-taught scientist whose work was decades ahead of its time. A meticulous naturalist whose illustrations rival professional botanists. A visionary conservationist who protected thousands of acres of wilderness.
And a woman who refused to disappear when the world demanded her silence.
They locked her out of the laboratory.
So she built a legacy that outlasted all of them.
She wrote stories that generations of children would love. She saved landscapes that still exist today. She proved that when one door slams shut, you don't beg to be let in—you build something so magnificent they spend the next century apologizing.
Beatrix Potter was told she couldn't be a scientist.
So she became a scientist, a bestselling author, and a conservation pioneer—all while the establishment that rejected her slowly crumbled into irrelevance.
The rabbits in her stories weren't just cute characters. They were drawn with the precision of someone who understood anatomy, behavior, habitat.
The landscapes weren't just pretty backdrops. They were ecosystems she studied, purchased, and protected.
Every page she wrote was an act of defiance. Every acre she saved was proof that they were wrong.
When they wouldn't let her into their institutions, she created her own institution—one that would outlast theirs.
And 54 years after her death, they finally admitted what she'd known all along:
She belonged there. She was right. And they were foolish to ever doubt her.

11/27/2025

I'd like to invite women's club members for free and all others by donation to practice qi gong based movement meditation with me. Come on down to move with and metabolize the material of our lives. Support regulation of emotions, sleep & waking cycles, as well as supporting healthy digestion. Learn about the meridian systems and how to increase the function flow of vital energy for keeping the strength of the muscles and bones while maintaining flexibility and mobility.
Chico Women's Club
592 E 3rd St, Chico

11/12/2025

They said she wouldn't survive her first night—so she traveled alone to 60 countries, then her town called her a witch and erased her from history.
The midwife shook her head. The baby was too small, too weak, born too early.
It was 1889 in Celje, a small town in Slovenia, then part of the sprawling Austro-Hungarian Empire. The infant girl gasped for breath in the cold October air.
Her mother didn't want her. Her father remained distant. The doctors gave her no chance.
But Alma Karlin refused to die.
She survived that first night. Then the next. And the next.
And then she did something nobody expected: she thrived.
Alma grew up small, frail, and partially deaf. In a society obsessed with beauty, propriety, and conformity, she was none of those things. She was different. Awkward. Bookish. Odd.
So she turned inward and discovered something extraordinary: she had a gift for languages.
By her twenties, Alma Karlin had mastered at least ten languages—possibly twelve. English, French, Italian, Spanish, Norwegian, Swedish, Russian, Croatian, and more. She created her own multilingual dictionaries. She worked as a teacher and translator, moving through words and worlds with equal fluency.
But teaching in a small Slovenian town felt like suffocation. Alma wanted more than borrowed adventures through books.
She wanted the world itself.
In 1919, at thirty years old, Alma Karlin made a decision that shocked everyone who knew her:
She was going to travel around the world. Alone.
Not with a tour group. Not with a husband or chaperone. Not with family money or institutional support.
Just her, a portable typewriter she lovingly named Erika, and an unshakeable determination.
Women simply didn't do this in 1919. Solo female travelers were nearly unheard of—considered dangerous, improper, scandalous, impossible.
Alma didn't care what was proper. She cared what was possible.
She left Celje with almost no money, planning to finance her journey by writing travel articles for European newspapers and teaching languages along the way.
For the next eight years, Alma Karlin traveled through more than sixty countries across Asia, the Pacific Islands, South America, and beyond.
She rode through the Andes on horseback. She survived malaria in the tropics. She documented Indigenous cultures with respect and curiosity. She studied religions, collected artifacts, and wrote prolifically—her dispatches marveling readers back home who could barely imagine such audacity.
She traveled through Japan, China, Korea, Hawaii, Samoa, Tonga, Peru, Australia, New Zealand, and dozens of places most Europeans had only seen on maps.
She did it alone. A small, deaf woman with a typewriter, navigating a world that constantly told her she didn't belong.
But Alma's travel writing wasn't typical colonial tourism. She didn't just observe—she immersed herself. She learned local languages. She stayed with families. She participated in ceremonies. She listened.
She wasn't a tourist. She was a witness, a chronicler, a bridge between worlds.
In 1927, after eight extraordinary years on the road, Alma returned home to Celje.
She expected recognition. Perhaps celebration. At minimum, respect for what she'd accomplished.
Instead, she was met with suspicion and whispers.
The woman who traveled alone? Who lived with "strange" people? Who brought back all those "pagan" artifacts?
They called her a witch.
Her massive collection—thousands of carefully documented ethnographic objects from around the world—was dismissed as occult, dangerous, unnatural.
Then the political situation in Europe darkened.
When the N***s occupied Slovenia during World War II, Alma's German linguistic heritage and her fierce independence made her a target. She faced interrogation. Her writings were scrutinized for disloyalty.
After the war, Tito's communist partisans distrusted her for being too German, too intellectual, too unconventional.
She was too much for everyone. And somehow not enough for anyone.
The only person who truly understood Alma was Thea Schreiber Gamelin, an artist who became her companion, her partner, and the love of her life.
They lived together openly—two women defying every social expectation in a deeply conservative, post-war society. Their relationship was scandalous to neighbors who already viewed Alma with suspicion.
But they didn't hide. They didn't apologize.
Together, Alma and Thea created a "Cabinet of Curiosities" in their home—a private museum filled with Alma's collection. Masks from the Pacific. Textiles from Asia. Sculptures from South America. Each piece carefully cataloged, each with its own story.
It was Alma's life's work. Her legacy. Her proof that the world was vast and varied and worth understanding.
On January 14, 1950, Alma Karlin died of cancer at age sixty.
She died in obscurity. Her books were out of print. Her collection was neglected and misunderstood. Her name was spoken as a warning—eccentric, strange, not to be emulated.
After her death, locals whispered that her artifacts were cursed. Some pieces were stolen. Others damaged. Children were told cautionary tales about the "mad woman" who brought dark magic back from distant lands.
For decades, Alma Karlin was erased from history.
Her crime? Traveling alone. Loving a woman. Bringing back objects people feared because they didn't understand them. Refusing to be small, quiet, and obedient.
But history has a way of correcting its mistakes.
In the 1990s and 2000s, scholars began rediscovering Alma's writings. Her travelogues were republished. Historians recognized her as one of the first women to document global cultures with such depth, empathy, and linguistic skill.
Her Cabinet of Curiosities was carefully restored and put on permanent display in the Celje Regional Museum, where her collection is now celebrated as an invaluable ethnographic archive.
In 2015—sixty-five years after her death—a statue of Alma Karlin was unveiled in the town square of Celje.
It shows her sitting with Erika, her beloved typewriter, gazing toward the horizon. Still looking outward. Still curious. Still unconfined.
Today, Alma is celebrated as a Slovenian national icon—a pioneering traveler, writer, linguist, and feminist who refused to be limited by gender, nationality, physical disability, or societal expectation.
Schoolchildren learn her name. Travelers visit her statue. Her books are studied in universities worldwide. Her courage is finally recognized.
But for fifty years after her death, she was called mad. Dangerous. A witch.
All because she dared to see the world on her own terms.
The midwife said she wouldn't survive her first night.
She survived—and then traveled alone to 60 countries with nothing but a typewriter and impossible determination.
She mastered a dozen languages and documented cultures with respect and curiosity.
The N***s interrogated her. Her neighbors called her a witch. She loved a woman openly in a time when that was unthinkable.
She died forgotten, her life's work dismissed as cursed.
But today, she has a statue in her hometown square.
Her collection fills a museum.
Her books teach new generations.
Her name is Alma Karlin.
And the world she refused to be confined by finally remembers her as she deserved:
Fearless. Brilliant. Free.

11/08/2025

For over 100 years, the world believed Louisa May Alcott only wrote wholesome stories for girls—then scholars discovered her secret identity and everything changed.
Everyone knows Little Women. Four sisters. Civil War. Growing up, falling in love, learning to be good and kind and patient.
Sweet. Moral. Safe.
That's Louisa May Alcott's legacy. The gentle author who taught generations of girls to be better women.
Except that's a lie.
Before Little Women made her famous, Louisa May Alcott was broke, furious, and writing stories about women who poisoned their husbands.
She was thirty years old in the 1860s. Unmarried. Supporting her entire family on her own. Her father—a transcendentalist philosopher named Amos Bronson Alcott—was brilliant at idealism and useless at making money. Her mother held everything together through sheer will. And Louisa? Louisa worked herself to exhaustion as a seamstress, governess, teacher, anything to keep them fed.
She was angry. Not quietly frustrated. Rage-filled angry at a world that gave women almost no choices.
So she wrote thrillers.
Not gentle moral tales. Blood-soaked sensation novels. Murder mysteries. O***m dens. Seduction and revenge. Women who manipulated men, committed crimes, and destroyed anyone who tried to control them.
Stories where women weren't victims waiting to be saved. They were dangerous. Powerful. Unapologetic.
And she published them under a pen name: A.M. Barnard.
Readers in the 1860s devoured them. They had no idea.
"Behind a Mask" featured a governess who was actually a manipulative actress plotting revenge. "Pauline's Passion and Punishment" was about a woman orchestrating an elaborate scheme to destroy the man who wronged her. "A Long Fatal Love Chase" had cross-dressing, obsession, and darkness that would make modern thriller writers jealous.
Louisa wrote in her diary: "I think my natural ambition is for the lurid style. I indulge in gorgeous fancies and wish that I dared inscribe them upon my pages."
She dared. Just not under her own name.
Then in 1868, her publisher begged her to write "a book for girls."
Louisa didn't want to. She didn't think she was good at writing for children. But she desperately needed money.
So she wrote Little Women. Based on her own childhood with her three sisters. She thought it was boring.
The world disagreed.
Little Women exploded. Became an instant sensation. Made Louisa May Alcott famous overnight.
And it destroyed her freedom.
Suddenly she was a moral authority. A role model. The woman who taught young girls virtue and patience. Publishers demanded more wholesome stories. More sequels about good children learning important lessons.
She wrote them. Little Men. Jo's Boys. Dozens of stories about being good and kind.
But privately, she wrote in her journal: "I am tired of being good. I should like to do something very bad and enjoy it."
She couldn't. Her career, her family's survival, depended on being safe. Respectable. The gentle lady author.
So A.M. Barnard disappeared. Louisa stopped publishing those dark, thrilling stories. When asked about them years later, she dismissed them. "I wrote them for money. They mean nothing."
But they meant everything. They were her real voice. Her rebellion. Her refusal to be only what the world wanted her to be.
Louisa May Alcott never married. She wrote in her diary: "I'd rather be a free spinster and paddle my own canoe."
She was fiercely independent, possibly q***r (scholars still debate whether she was le***an or asexual), and deeply frustrated by what society demanded of women.
She'd worked as a Civil War nurse—nearly died from typhoid and was treated with mercury that poisoned her for the rest of her life. She supported her entire family for decades. She wrote constantly, prolifically, exhaustingly.
But the world only saw her as one thing: the sweet author of Little Women.
Louisa died in 1888 at age 55, just two days after her father died. She was exhausted. Sick. Largely forgotten by serious literary critics who dismissed her as a children's author.
And her secret died with her.
For over fifty years, A.M. Barnard's sensation novels sat in archives, yellowing and forgotten. Nobody connected them to Louisa May Alcott. Why would they? The wholesome author of Little Women couldn't have written stories about murder, o***m, and seduction.
Then in 1943, everything changed.
A scholar named Leona Rostenberg was researching 19th-century publishers when she found something strange. Records linking A.M. Barnard to Louisa May Alcott.
It couldn't be. Could it?
She dug deeper. Found manuscripts. Compared handwriting. Traced payments.
It was true.
Louisa May Alcott had been living a double life for decades. The respectable author of moral tales had been secretly writing scandalous thrillers about dangerous women who refused to play by the rules.
For over a century, nobody knew.
In the 1970s and 80s, feminist scholars rediscovered and republished Alcott's sensation fiction. Suddenly the world saw a completely different woman. Not the gentle lady who taught girls to be patient and kind.
A woman who wrote about power. Desire. Revenge. Women who lied and manipulated and killed to get what they wanted.
A woman who was far more complex, far more interesting, far more real than the sanitized image history had preserved.
Today, Alcott's A.M. Barnard novels are studied alongside Little Women. They're taught in universities. Analyzed for their feminist themes and q***r coding.
Because Louisa May Alcott was never just the author of wholesome children's books.
She was rage disguised as respectability.
She was ambition hidden behind propriety.
She was a woman who wrote blood on the page and then erased her name so she could survive.
For over 100 years, the world only knew half of her. The safe half. The acceptable half.
But the truth was always there, waiting in dusty archives for someone to look closely enough.
Louisa May Alcott refused to be only one thing. Even if she had to keep half of herself secret to survive.
Here's what her story teaches us:
How many women throughout history have had to hide their real selves to be acceptable? How many brilliant, angry, complicated women have been flattened into "sweet" and "moral" and "proper"?
How many of us right now are living double lives—showing the world what it expects while our real voices stay hidden?
Louisa May Alcott spent decades writing what she really thought, really felt, really wanted to say—and then publishing it under a fake name because the world couldn't handle a woman who wasn't wholesome.
She was forced to choose between authenticity and survival. Between her real voice and her career.
And for over a century, we believed the lie. We thought she was only Little Women.
But she was always more. Always angrier. Always more dangerous and complicated and real.
The world wanted her wholesome.
She gave them blood and murder under a secret name.
And even though she had to hide it, even though she couldn't claim it, even though it took 100 years for the truth to come out—
She wrote it anyway.
That's not just history. That's courage.
Be your whole self. Write your truth. Refuse to be flattened into what's comfortable for everyone else.
Even if you have to do it in secret. Even if no one knows the full you right now.
Write it anyway.
Because someday, someone will find the truth. Someone will piece together who you really were. Someone will discover that you were never just the acceptable version the world wanted.
You were always more.
Just like Louisa.

11/07/2025

Join us for a film screening, Q&A with and Community Sing with Director Aaron Johnson.

Johnson’s powerful short film “Dark and Tender” follows ten Black men on a transformative retreat with the Chronically UnderTouched (CUT) Project outside Seattle, Washington. The men seek to reclaim platonic intimacy and tenderness through close encounters with nature and depictions of gentle Black masculinity, restoring the vital aspect of touch by replacing violence and rough play with care, connection, and intimacy.

Official Trailer | Dark and Tender | A Film by the Chronically UnderTouched (CUT) Project
READ Seattle Medium: “Short Film Seeks to Bring Racial Healing for Black Men Through Touch”

Color of Sound, Producer of Dark and Tender, is a nonprofit 501c3 organization located in Port Townsend, WA just two hours northwest of Seattle. Color of Sound is dedicated to improving the lives of people of color in the PNW and beyond through racial healing, housing and land access, restorative justice, and economic development. Our first project is the Chronically UnderTouched Project short film called Dark and Tender.