If people don't vote, everything stays the same. You can protest until the sky turns yellow or the moon turns blue, and it's not going to change anything if you don't vote.”

– Dolores Huerta, Mexican-American labor leader,    United Farm Workers co-founder

WOW2  is a   four-times-a-month  sister blog to   This Week in the War on Women. This edition covers women and events from  September 9 through September 15.

The next installment of WOW2 will be on Saturday, September 17, 2022.

September15 to October 15 is Hispanic Heritage Month .

The Theme for 2022 is Unidos: Inclusivity for a Stronger Nation

“We have to be visible. We should not be ashamed of who we are.”

– Sylvia Rivera,   Puerto Rican-Venezuelan-American   and transgender rights activist

“Puerto Ricans are United States citizens, and I think that the issue of statehood or independence needs to be addressed and needs to be resolved.”  

– Rosie Perez,    Puerto Rican-American performer and Puerto Rican rights activist  

The purpose of WOW2 is to learn about and honor women of achievement, including many who’ve been ignored or marginalized in most of the history books, and to mark moments in women’s history. It also serves as a reference archive of women’s history. There are so many more phenomenal women than I ever dreamed of finding, and all too often their stories are almost unknown, even to feminists and scholars.

These trailblazers have a lot to teach us about persistence in the face of overwhelming odds. I hope you will find reclaiming our past as much of an inspiration as I do.

will post soon,  so be sure  to go there next, and catch  up on the latest dispatches from the frontlines.

Many, many thanks to  libera nos,  intrepid  Assistant Editor of WOW2. Any remaining mistakes are either mine, or uncaught computer glitches in transferring the data from his emails to DK5. And much thanks to  wow2lib,  WOW2’s Librarian Emeritus.

Note: All images and audios are  below  the person or event to which they refer.

The giant Pacific octopus lays up to 74,000 eggs in a deep den or cave and painstakingly cares for them for six or seven months without leaving — not even for food. While this keeps the babies safe from predators, it is an act of self-sacrifice. To survive without food, female giant Pacific octopuses live off the fats and proteins within their own bodies until the eggs hatch, ultimately dying of self-cannibalization as a result.

This octopus is a cephalopod, related to squid and cuttlefish. They average 12 feet in length, and weigh over 50 pounds. The females don’t reproduce until near the end of their lifespan (for obvious reasons). After mating, a female can store the male’s sperm for several months before deciding the time is right to fertilize and lay her eggs.

The giant Pacific octopus population numbers are largely unknown—more science is needed to understand their population health and the risks of changing environmental conditions to octopus. However, climate change is likely to negatively affect giant Pacific octopuses because warming temperatures could disrupt egg development, acidification will harm the species they prey on, and growing oceanic hypoxic zones (places with little or no oxygen) will decrease available habitat.