Cf 246

Glenn Seaborg

Misty May

Ed Brokaw

David Wilson

Judy Gantz

Dori Rawlins

Iris Chang

Philip Zimbardo

Kathan Brown

Lynda Williams

Steven Sears

Ellwood Kieser

Deborah Faust

Lynda Williams

lynda williams wants to change the world

I drove up to san francisco
to take lynda williams’ picture
because
she is the physics chanteuse

because
she is this unexpected amalgam
this woman
who teaches physics
at san francisco state
and who’s worked as a go-go dancer

because
she’s combined the physics
and the go-go
into the physics chanteuse

because
the largest labs around the world
now fly her in to perform
at their big meetings

I drove up to san francisco
expecting to find this wacky
inspiring
unique woman

I found her
but more
I found a woman
who wants to change the world
oh sure
a social democrat
she worries about the gap between
rich and poor

but she worries more
about the gap between
the science educated
and those who aren’t

about the gap between
the science rich and the science poor

at san francisco state
she encourages the women
the traditional rejects of science
to empower themselves
to circumvent a lifetime of victimization
at the hands of auto repairmen
unscrupulous politicians
and myriad others
who would use science
not to empower
but to oppress

the empowered
physicist-woman-go-go-dancer
believes
everyone should study science
because it is truth
because it is power

Physics Chanteuse
San Francisco
2 August 99



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