Name: Amy (she/her)
Age: 40-something
Location: Boston, originally from the Chicago area.
Stuff about me: I've lived with anxiety since I was a teenager, and take antidepressants. I am functional, but I am probably more anxious than average, and every so often, I get really keyed up.  Sometimes it's in relation to a specific thing, sometimes for no reason at all. Brains are weird.
Identity: queer. Probably a more accurate description is biromantic grey ace, but that's a mouthful. I didn't identify as bi until my early 40s-yeah, and I'm embracing that identity. The ace stuff, that took longer to figure out, and to be honest, I'd rather not be. 

Family:
Dana (she/her): wife. Together for a ridiculous amount of time. Engineering manager, works remote. Quintessential computer geek, collector of Commodore and vintage Apple/Mac computers. Laughs at my stupid jokes. Dana began a gender transition in summer of 2020. It's had a lot of ups and downs.

Andrew: child (she/they) born in April 2016 (aka Andy or Little Bean). Andy is on a gender journey of their own, and considers themselves genderfluid at this time. Is this the final stop on the journey? Who knows? I'm just along for the ride. Anyway, I use all of the above pronouns, depending on the day. Anyway, Andy loves public transit, Minecraft, Super Mario brothers, kitties, stuffed animals, math, and donuts.

Kitties:
Hanna Valentina (2014?-)-grey domestic longhair, shy around people, but loves to play with toys.

Ashmont Pixie (Ash) (2019-) brown tabby DSH, skittish, but playful and demanding of pets. Loves her big sister Hanna.


Previous kitties:
Inigo (2002?-2009)
Daisy (2005-2017)
Margarita (2001-2018)
Turing (2008-2024)

Most of the rest of our family lives in Chicago:

Mom and Dad-married 50 years, 70 somethings, retired.

Brother-divorced, software engineer living in the Chicago suburbs. Ex-sister in law works for the National Park Service. Nephew was born in 2015, super sweet and loves Hot Wheels and Nintendo.

Sister-graphic designer. Husband is a freelance photographer. Son born in October 2024

On Dana's side: We are currently no-contact with her abusive parents. We are in limited contact with the rest of the family. Two brothers, both married, one niece, three nephews (all grown), and two great nephews.

Work:
Occupation: Mad Scientist! OK, I'm lab manager of an academic research group. Our project is the development of drug-eluting contact lenses for the treatment of various ophthalmic diseases.

Education: MS in Bioengineering from the University of Illinois-Chicago, BA in Psychology from DePaul University.

Work people:
My boss-Ophthalmologist and principal investigator
Dr. B-postdoc (optometry)
Dr. K2-instructor (ophthalmology)
S-postdoc (bioengineering)
V-instructor (cancer and genetics)
A-postdoc (nanobiotechnology)
SG-visiting scientist (bioengineering)
M-postdoc (veterinary science/toxicology)

I like:
Geek stuff (Doctor Who is my emotional support TV show. Also Star Trek, MST3K/Rifftrax, many many others),
Euro-style board games
Baking
Books (sci-fi but usually not fantasy, medical biography/discovery are my big reading categories)
LGBTQ history, particularly the history of HIV.
Puzzles
Writing:
I am co-organizer for a local critique group.
One novel self-published, another in progress.
Fanfiction (Either as justphoenix or Allamarain on AO3). I will talk about it from time to time, but try not to go crazy over it.)
I tend to write in the speculative genre (fantasy, sci-fi, alt history), but not exclusively. I like writing queer characters. I like finding interesting worlds and thinking about the implications.
Animal welfare-We have both volunteered at no-kill shelters in the past
Bicycling! I got a bike in 2021 after 30 years of not riding one, and am loving it. I commute regularly to work on bike, weather permitting (12-15 miles daily)

Journal notes:
Things I write about: daily life, occasional ruminations on current events
Will cut for: pictures, lengthy entries, NSFW content, sensitive topics, weight/diet talk. I don't do weight loss diets, but I might talk about body image, clothing sizes, and frustration with diet culture/weight loss fixations.
Comments: As you see fit. A little, a lot, or not at all. Don't feel obligated.

Things that might be deal breakers for you:
Talk about kids and parenting-I do a lot of this. I don't discuss anything about my child involving the swimsuit area. Biomedical research involving animals-I do some of this (mostly in rabbits). Anything highly descriptive will be behind a cut.
Atheism. I'm not self-righteous or evangelical about it, but if you're uber-religious and write about it a lot, I don't think we're going to click.

26. Alvin F. Pouissant, MD

Dr. Pouissant wasn't originally in my plans for this month, but he passed away on Monday and there's been a bit of press coverage. He's an interesting guy. Dr. Pouissant was a psychiatrist who focused on the mental health effects of racism on blacks in American communities.  He was a founding member of Operation PUSH, and the associate dean of students at Harvard Medical School.  He was also a media consultant, having worked on The Cosby Show and A Different World. He was 90 when he died.

27. Charles W. Chappelle

Mr. Chappelle was an electrical engineer and aviation pioneer. He designed and built a plane capable of long-distance flight, which was displayed at an airplane show in 1911.  The interest in the plane led him found the African Union Company, a Ghanaian import/export company. He was also the first head electrician of U.S. Steel, and an architect, designing several buildings in Brooklyn. 

23. Francesca Nneka Okeke, PhD

Dr. Okeke is a Nigerian physicist, and the first woman department head at the University of Nigeria. Her research interests include the ionosphere and geomagnetism, and her research has helped understand the effects of climate change.

24. Sophia A. Hussen, MD

Dr. Hussen is an infecious disease specialist and associate professor at Emory University in Georgia. Her research interest is  HIV in teenagers and young adults with a focus on black MSM. She's dedicated to improving care outcomes and mental health in the populations she investigates. She has 73 publications and counting.

18. Lonnie G. Johnson, MS 

Mr. Johnson is an aerospace engineer and inventor extraordinaire. He's worked for the JPL, he's teamed up with green energy scientists..and he invented the Super Soaker.

He's founded three companies and has over 250 patents. 


19. Otis F. Boykin

Mr. Boykin was the chief engineer at CTS Labs, an electronics reserach company. His work focused on improving electronic resistors. He is best known for designing a control unit for a cardiac pacemaker. Not a lot is known about him, but he did have 26 patents and was a consultant in France.

Granville T Woods 

Mr Woods was an engineer and inventor. He started out working for railroads, but eventually became successful enough to have his own business. Among his inventions:

The Induction Telegraph: allowed people to communicate by voice over telegraph wires, which was much faster than telegram.

Improved third rail electrical systems for powering trains

Improved air brakes on trains

 

Over his lifetime he had 50 patents. Thomas Edison offered him a partnership, which he turned down. 

Edmond Albius 



This is a sad one.

Albius was an enslaved 12 year old boy when he changed the cultivation of vanilla forever.

Albius was born and lived in Reunion, a small Island near Madagascar, and worked on a plantation. The French colonists on Reunion and Madagascar were interested in cultivating vanilla, but had difficulty getting the plants to grow. Albius developed a technique for hand fertilizing vanilla plants, a technqiue that is still used today. 

Despite the French vanilla growers gaining vast profits and dominating the vanilla trade, Albius was never given any compensation for his discovery. He was given his freedom at age 19, but could only find work as a laborer. He died destitute at the age of 51.

11. Scott V. Edwards, PhD 

Dr. Edwards is a professor of evolutionary biology and Curator of Ornithology at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology. My job title feels incredibly uncool by comparison :P

He studies the molecular evolution of birds, including how they evolved from dinosaurs. He has published over 100 papers and appeared in the SyFy series Beast Legends.

I'm gonna head over to that museum and see he's got any Krakens on display :P

 Ronald E.McNair, PhD

Dr. McNair was one of the astronauts that perished aboard Challenger in 1986. In addition to being an astronaut and physicist, he was a black belt in karate and accomplished saxophonist. Nichelle Nichols (the original Uhura) recruited him to NASA as part of a program to attract women and racial minorities. 

A famous story from McNair's childhood. He grew up in South Carolina, under Jim Crow laws. He tried to check out a book from the local library but was refused based on his race. But the young McNair insisted and refused to leave the library, to the point where the police were called, who told the librarians to let him check out the book. Not ACAB, I guess. 

That library is now named after McNair, as is building 37 at MIT. 

7. Benjamin Banneker

Today we go back to the 18th century, or as Andy would say, "horse times".  Mr. Banneker was a free man living in a slave state. Despite recieving no formal education, he had sophisticated expertise in mechanics and astronomy. He predicted tides and eclipses. He built a clock just by looking at the way a watch was constructed. He also did surveying for what would become Washington, DC. and exchanged letters with Thomas Jefferson on the subject of civil rights. 

 4. Kizzmekia S. Corbett, Ph.D.

Dr. Corbett is an immunologist and professor at Harvard Medical School. Her field of study? A little thing you might have heard of called coronaviruses.

In the mid-teens, she worked on SARS and MERS research as a NIH fellow. She was also part of the team that brough the Moderna COVID vaccine to fruition.