A Snowy Start to Women's History Month 🎿
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The Ten News Season 3: Episode 37
💖 Celebrating Women's History Month and the inspiring women of the past & present 📖 It's snow time and Ryan Nerz is in the studio with the Author of Ski Patrol Pups, Megan Butcher ⚙️ Trivia with Tessa: What digital tool did Hedy Lamarr develop?
Links
https://www.womenshistory.org/womens-history/womens-history-month
https://womenshistorymonth.gov/about/
https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/judge-ketanji-brown-jackson
https://coolassociatesllc.com/celebrating-latinas-for-womens-history-month/
https://www.prevention.com/life/g37068549/famous-asian-american-pacific-islander-women/
https://nationalwomenshistoryalliance.org/special-event-announcing-the-2023-womens-history-theme/
https://hedylamarr.com/about/biography/
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TRANSCRIPT:
Pamela Kirkland 0:02
Oh my gosh. Why in the wombat is the office filled with snow? Ryan?
Ryan Willard 0:09
Hi, Pamela!
Pamela Kirkland 0:10
Ryan, what are you doing?
Ryan Willard 0:13
Haven't you heard the news? There was snow in LA this week. And since that almost never happens, I decided to put snow in the studio. Time for a snowball fight in the Ten News studio.
Pamela Kirkland 0:28
Ryan, put the snowballs down. It's time to start the show. I'm Pamela Kirkland.
Ryan Willard 0:34
And I'm Ryan Willard. It's Wednesday, March 1st.
Pamela Kirkland 0:36
And this is The Ten News.
Sound Bit 0:41
10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
Pamela Kirkland 0:48
March 1st marks the start of Women's History Month. This celebration began in the early 1980s and was formally announced by the US Congress in 1987.
Ryan Willard 0:59
It's an entire month dedicated to the achievements and contributions made by women in all areas of life from medicine, aviation, and space travel to writing music and dance. It's also a time to celebrate how far women's rights have come. Just over 100 years ago, women could not vote in the US, even after winning the right for women to vote in 1920. It wasn't until 1975 that a law was passed allowing all women from all racial backgrounds to vote.
Pamela Kirkland 1:29
Women's History Month doesn't just commemorate the past accomplishments of famous women like Amelia Earhart and Rosa Parks but also recognizes women making history today like Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Sound Bit 1:44
In my family, it took just one generation to go from segregation to the Supreme Court of the United States.
Pamela Kirkland 1:53
Former astronaut and director of the Johnson Space Center Dr. Ellen Ochoa.
Sound Bit 1:58
I wanted to give kids the idea that the things they're naturally interested in asking questions about the world and trying to understand it. That's exactly what scientists do.
Pamela Kirkland 2:08
And Oscar-winning film director Chloe Sout.
Sound Bit 2:11
I have always found goodness in the people I met everywhere I went in the world. And this is for you. You inspire me to keep going
Ryan Willard 2:20
March is also when the UN celebrates International Women's Day. This year, it falls on March 8th, and the theme is Digital Innovation and Technology for Gender Equality. According to studies by the UN, involving women in the creation of digital technologies will make the global economy $1 trillion richer. Plus, it'll make digital spaces safer for women and girls.
Pamela Kirkland 2:43
The theme for this year's Women's History Month is celebrating women who tell our stories. So we're inviting Ten'ers to tell us the story of a woman who inspires you. Call 1-8-7-7-T-E-N-E-W-S and leave us a message about a woman who inspires you then we'll play your messages in our episodes all throughout Women's History Month. Nice. All right, Ryan. I won't throw a snowball if you don't throw a snowball.
Ryan Willard 3:17
But if I throw, you'll throw?
Pamela Kirkland 3:20
That's correct.
Tracy Kaplan 3:22
Hey, guys. Oh, Ryan, Pam, what is happening in here, is this snow? And, now it's the on the floor. Oh, I see. I expect this from Ryan. But Pam, we have jobs to do, very cool jobs.
Pamela Kirkland 3:42
I might have gotten a little carried away. But while we're on the topic of jobs, Ryan Nerz is joining us today to tell us about quite possibly the coolest job I've ever heard of.
Ryan Nerz 4:03
This is a story about two awesome jobs. The first job well, I'll give you a hint. It involves snow and also smells. And this is one of those jobs where you start really, really young.
Megan Butcher 4:17
He worked at Alpine Meadows his whole life. He started there when he was I think 10 weeks old, maybe even younger. He was very young. And they start training right away.
Ryan Nerz 4:30
You heard that right. 10 weeks old. I mean, this job training starts during potty training. To be fair, it is a pretty simple job. It basically just involves sniffing around in the snow for particular smells. But guess what? You could never get this job. Partially because you're not a good enough smeller but mainly because you're human.
Megan Butcher 4:53
So Walter was an avalanche Search Dog at alpine meadows in Lake Tahoe. He worked with my husband Colin, who's a ski patroller there.
Ryan Nerz 5:03
That's Megan Butcher from Truckee, California. She was the co-owner of Walter, the golden retriever with the golden nose.
Megan Butcher 5:13
He loved his job. He was made for that job. He was a dog from a hunting line. So he was super high drive super high energy. A little crazy, but that was good. And he just had a great life.
Ryan Nerz 5:29
Yes. Sadly, Walter passed away in 2020. But he brought so much joy and has left such a rich legacy that I think you'll agree his story has a happy ending. Walter was very close to his handler, Megan's husband column, so close that Walter didn't really approve of her moving into their house.
Megan Butcher 5:49
I'll never forget one day, when we were newly married, I had a pile of my clothes lined up in a pile of my husband's. And Walter destroyed my pile. And didn't touch my husband’s. And they were touching. I mean, so I was like, Oh, this is a very different relationship.
Ryan Nerz 6:06
But it's no surprise that they were so close, Walter the dog, and call on the human lived and worked together, and their job could get intense. Whenever an avalanche struck near alpine meadows or ski resorts, Walter Cullen and their whole crew would go investigate. Walter and the other dogs were trained to smell humans. But Megan says their job was bigger than that.
Megan Butcher 6:30
Obviously, the hope is that they can get that live find. And the life find is like they find the person alive under the snow. But I mean, they bring so much joy to people at the resorts, that I think that in itself is really cool. They have dog trading cards for all these dogs. And I mean, I've met kids who have scrapbooks full of these trading cards, and they're teenagers now and they have loved them for years.
Ryan Nerz 6:56
Wait, what? Walter had his own trading card? What a star. Actually, sometimes that star power would get Megan some benefits around town. Like when she went to go pick up her ski pass.
Megan Butcher 7:08
The girl behind the pass desk was getting my season ski pass. She said something and she's like, Oh, well, I don't see you on this list. And I was like, Okay, well, I am and then something came up about Walter and she was like, oh, you know, Walter said, yes. Well, there's my dog. Can you give me my ski pass now because he's my dog?
Ryan Nerz 7:30
Needless to say, Walter was a special dog. And his owners were extremely sad when he passed.
Megan Butcher 7:36
They're family members and especially with Walter, I mean, he, he went to work with my husband every day in the winter. So it was really hard. It was hard for me to see when he went back to patrolling that winter. Like, I was like, how is this going to be? You know, it was, it was definitely an emotional connection that they had.
Ryan Nerz 7:58
Little did Megan know that Walter's legacy would live on, thanks, not just to their memories of him, but also to social media.
Megan Butcher 8:07
When he passed away in 2020, there was this viral video of him on Instagram, I guess on all social media. He's loading a chairlift with my husband, and the guy in the background and the video is like, so excited and so amped to see this happen.
Ryan Nerz 8:25
It's true. The guy watching Walter load, the chair is really psyched. Have a listen. Please tell me your good boy, Walter. Just to give you a visual, Walter casually walks up to the ski lift chair and just hops on. The cutest part is his tail sticking out behind the chair. The clip was hugely popular 320,000 likes and counting. Megan got an idea. She wondered whether she could use Walters's memory to spread awareness about ski patrol dogs, and also helped make her own dream job a reality.
Megan Butcher 8:59
I was a journalism major in college a million years ago, and then became a first-grade teacher and then became an event planner. And I was like, I have to use my writing knowledge for something in my life. And I have a four-year-old and I've always wanted to write a children's book, probably since I was in the third grade, I can remember. And I just one day was like, I'm gonna do it. And so I started to do it.
Ryan Nerz 9:26
Megan focused on Walters's early years, she called the book Ski Patrol pups, and finding an illustrator for the book was shockingly easy.
Megan Butcher 9:35
So she lives in Truckee as well. Her son goes to preschool with my son, and we were introduced through one of our good friends. And like I said, she's written two children's books ourselves, the Tahoe and Truckee ABCs. And I've always loved them. And so when my friend was like, Hey, you should meet Megan. It's like perfect, and we just hit it off and I was able to give her a lot of images of Walter like the cover shot is him and Avast. And that's like a picture that we have of him that she illustrated.
Ryan Nerz 10:09
There you have it to Megan's one amazing book.
Megan Butcher 10:12
And we just started working together and it was great. But I just really wanted to bring awareness to how important these dogs are. They're not your average dog. And they're really special and really cool.
Ryan Nerz 10:26
And that, my friends, is how we come to our second cool job in this story, Ski Patrol Pups got published and Megan butcher became an author. These days, if Megan wants to stroll down memory lane with Walter, she can read her own book to her five-year-old son, or she can go back and watch that video of him hopping on the ski lift chair, which never gets old for her and millions of other people.
Megan Butcher 10:54
But I think people just loved it because it was so sweet. And that was he loved to load the chair and my husband said he always did it so confidently and naturally and hearing the guy in the background just be so pumped and excited for him then he passed away, Walter that August unexpectedly. And so to see that video continued to be shared and to bring people joy was really cool.
Pamela Kirkland 11:21
Thanks, Ryan Nerz and Megan, get your copy of Ski Patrol Pups at the link in our show notes and follow Megan, @skipatrolpups.
Tessa Flannery 11:43
Welcome to the Trivia room.
Tracy Kaplan 11:46
Hey, Tessa. Pam and Ryan are busy throwing snowballs at each other. So I'm hopping on the throne today.
Tessa Flannery 11:52
Well, you're safe in here, Tracy, as long as you're ready to hop up on the trivia throne for our Women's History Month trivia question. Ready?
Sound Bit 12:00
What is going on here?
Tessa Flannery 12:13
The UN is celebrating Women in Digital Technology. But did you know that Austrian American film star and inventor Hedy Lamarr is responsible for a key part of our digital lives today? It's true, but can you guess what everyday tool she's responsible for? Is it a) digital cameras, b) wi-fi, or c) texting? Ten'ers, did you guess it? Tracy? What's your answer?
Tracy Kaplan 12:39
Oh, I know this one. Not only was she an amazing actress, but she invented wifi. The answer is B!
Tessa Flannery 12:47
The answer is B. Hedy Lamarr invented a technology that led to the development of Wi-Fi. As a scientist during World War II, Hedy Lamarr was working on a way to keep radio communication from being intercepted by the Nazis, she developed a method called frequency hopping. That is a key part of our modern communication systems, including Wi-Fi, GPS, and Bluetooth. So next time you're watching a show on your tablet through your Bluetooth headphones as your grownups use GPS to drive around, press pause, and thank movie star, Hedy Lamarr. Ten'ers, do you want to sit on the trivia throne and share your trivia knowledge? Visit thetennews.com/contact to get in touch, and we might have you on the show.
Ryan Willard 13:37
Pamela, we're almost done, right? Can I begin my snowball onslaught?
Pamela Kirkland 13:41
Well, first, we've got to give special Ten News snaps to one of our listeners. But before we do, here's a quick note for the grown-ups.
Ryan Willard 13:49
Time for Ten News Snaps.
Pamela Kirkland 13:57
Ten'er, Nathan Nola wrote this review of The Ten News, "great voices, curiosity, investigative news, and diversity of interests. I'm always listening in with my kids."
Ryan Willard 14:10
Thanks, Nathan Nola, and thanks for listening to The Ten News. Ten Things You Need to Know drops every Tuesday and our in-depth reports drop every Wednesday. But if you want some bonus content, you can join the Ten'ers Club on our website or on Apple podcasts.
Pamela Kirkland 14:24
The Ten News is a coproduction of Small But Mighty Media & Next Chapter Podcasts.
Ryan Willard 14:29
The Ten News creative team is finally having a snowball fight and includes Tracey Crooks, Pete Musto, and Tessa Flannery. Special thanks to Ryan Nerz for contributing to this episode.
Pamela Kirkland 14:39
Our production director is Jeremiah Tittle and our executive producers are Donald Albright and show creator Tracy Leeds Kaplan.
Ryan Willard 14:47
I'm Ryan Willard.
Pamela Kirkland 14:48
And I'm Pamela Kirkland. Thanks for listening to The Ten News. Now, off to continue the snowball fight!
