When Amelia Earhart (b. July 24, 1897) disappeared over the Pacific on July 2, 1937, she left behind a legacy shrouded in legend, glory, and modern-day mythmaking. Celebrated as a pioneering aviator and the first woman to cross the Atlantic on a solo flight, she was also a smart businesswoman, a generous caretaker, and a relentless champion of education. She applied her remarkable tenacity to everything she took on, demanding a great deal of herself and never failing to live up to it, in public or in private. Though she grew up in a troubled home, financially strained and with an alcoholic father, that tenacity would come to define Amelia from a young age. Firmly set on getting an education, she saved up money and eventually sent herself to the Ogontz School, a junior college in Pennsylvania, in the fall of 1916. She was 21, significantly older than her classmates, but she compensated for the missed years by taking on an exceptional amount and array of academic work. In her correspondence with her mother, young Earhart outlines her scholarly voraciousness, which would later translate into her drive for aviation: I am taking Modern Drama Literature, German and German Literature outside. French three and five in which latter we are reading Eugénie Grandet. And Senior arithmetic and logic if I can. Besides reading a good deal and art, Bible, etc. etc. I am elected to write the senior song, but you know the more one does the more one can do. […] Despite my unusual activity I am very well organized to do more the more I do. But during her Christmas vacation in 1917, Earhart was moved by the wounded soldiers returning from WWI and decided to volunteer at a military hospital, performing arduous nursing duties after receiving training as a nurse’s aid from the Red Cross. She found a profound calling in the life of service and, having received her mother’s permission to leave college without graduating, she returned to the hospital in 1918 to nurse the war wounded full-time. In the fall of 1919, she enrolled in Columbia University as a premed student. But Amelia soon found her faith in the skies. In 1920, she fell in love with flying and the rest, as they say, is history. Eight years later, in June of 1928, made her first transatlantic flight as a passenger, and four years after that, she flew across the Atlantic as a solo pilot. One of the most astonishing, little-known facts about Earhart’s life – a testament to her tenacious spirit and capacity for self-transcendence – is that she accomplished all of her feats despite debilitating chronic sinus pain, for which she was hospitalized multiple times and which was only exacerbated by the open-air cockpits that exposed her to harsh winds, high pressure, and extreme cold. Still, like fellow reconstructionist Frida Kahlo who made art history despite severe chronic pain, frequent hospitalizations, and more than 30 operations, Earhart achieved what she did without complaint or cry for pity, driven by optimism and dedication to her calling. Despite her passion for the skies,however, Earhart always kept education, especially the education of women, a primary focus of her relentless dedication, lecturing in universities around the world and even inspiring a course in “household engineering” at Purdue University, where 1,000 of the 6,000 students were women. She also counseled young women on their careers. At Purdue, she advised graduating girls to try a certain job but not be afraid to make a change if they found something better, adding: And if you should find that you are the first woman to feel an urge in that direction, what does it matter? Feel it and act on it just the same. It may turn out to be fun. And to me fun is the indispensable part of work. (Fittingly, she titled her memoir The Fun Of It: Random Records of My Own Flying and of Women in Aviation.) Her views on marriage, too, were incredibly ahead of her time and would be considered progressive even today – yet another expression of Earhart’s singular gift for navigating new cultural territory with courage and conviction. Learn more: Brain Pickings (https://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/07/24/amelia-earhart-letters-2/) [http://thereconstructionists.org/page/4] What do Buddhist artist Agnes Martin, Hollywood inventor Hedy Lamarr, and French-Cuban author Anaïs Nin have in common? Their names may not conjure popular recognition, and yet, for Lisa Congdon and Maria Popova, these women represent a particular breed of cultural trailblazer: female, under-appreciated, badass. They are “Reconstructionists,” as the writer-illustrator duo call them – and for the next year, they’ll be celebrated on a blog of the same name. Every Monday for 12 months, The Reconstructionists will debut a hand-painted illustration and short essay highlighting a woman from fields such as art, science, and literature. The subject needn’t be famous, but she will, as Popova, the creator of Brain Pickings, puts it, “have changed the way we define ourselves as a culture." We spoke with Popova, and illustrator Congdon, about the inspiration.... [http://storyboard.tumblr.com/post/41698890843/the-reconstructionists-celebrating-badass-women]