Heard on the street: 2009 Female Mechanics calendar may be a collector's item

If you like this picture and want a piece of history, order your 2009 Female Mechanics calendar soon because there is a possibility that Sarah will be in grad school next year, not on the road photographing and interviewing the next few hundred cracks in the grease ceiling.

I am promoting Sarah and her work with fervor because I believe that in the future she will be compared to Margaret Bourke-White (photo journalist whose photo was on the cover of the first issue of Life Magazine in 1936) for her recording of this first generation of female mechanics. I hope this will be the last time in a modern country when discovering your mechanic is a woman makes you smile because she an anomaly. When I was a kid (that phrase is coming off my fingers altogether too often!) female doctors and female news anchors were anomalous; now they are taken for granted.

I have a copy of the first issue of Ms. Magazine. I hid it under my bed because I didn't want my parents to know I had bought it. Now that issue lives in a fire-proof box along with other important papers - including the 2007 and 2008 Female Mechanics calendar, to be joined by the 2009 Female Mechanics calendar at the end of next year.