In space, zero gravity causes hair to increase in volume, get curly and float. A woman astronaut with long hair is encouraged to pull back their hair into a ponytail. Astronaut and Navy commander Suni Williams had a plan before she left Earth on the current space shuttle mission, to cut her hair and send the ponytail back to Earth on the Space Shuttle Discovery to be made into a wig for a cancer patient undergoing chemotherapy. To state this woman is awe-inspiring is an understatement. In the ABC News Ponytail in Space report, when asked if she is a role model for young girls, Williams is quoted as saying, "I hope so. I wasn't always the sharpest tool in the shed, the smartest kid on the block, but I think there was a lot of persistence. And I hope kids understand it is OK to fail, if you learn something from failing. Maybe you don't get the first thing that you want, but if you are good at what you do, and you try hard, some things sort of fall into place. If you want something, you can obtain it."
I would say the courageous, determined and spirited Williams is a heroic role model for everyone, regardless of gender or age. According to the report, the smart, tall, willowy brunette with a wicked sense of humor, and zest for life was dancing to Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run before she climbed into her spacesuit for a grueling 7½-hour spacewalk on Saturday.
To view the online news video for this story, visit Space: The Haircutting Frontier.
We are all adults here. I am assuming we are all adults here. If not, before you follow the link to this video, you might want to do it when the kids are not in the room. Not because there is anything they should not see, but because knowing kids the way I do, they might ask what the lady in the video is doing with the plum. 
Sunday, at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Milan B. Williams, keyboardist and one of the original founding members of the Commodores, lost his life to cancer. The musicians who met in college at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama in the late 60's, got together and formed a band later to become internationally famous and known as the Commodores.
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CNN's Todd Leopold has reviewed a new book of doubt, humor, hope and motherhood -- the passions of Marjorie Williams. A collection of Williams essays and profiles, The Woman at the Washington Zoo, is being timed for release on Mother's Day. Edited by her husband Noah, Williams, who once worked as a journalist for publications such as the Washington Post, Vanity Fair and Slate, and who lost her life to liver cancer, was known for her honesty and unflinching gaze into the complexities, conflict and truth about people and life. In the last section of the book, she writes about the shock of being diagnosed with liver cancer and how she coped with telling her children the truth about her cancer. Marjorie Williams died on January 16, 2005. She was 47. To read the entire book review and discover a book that makes for good reading, 
