and other female creatures
1. I wanted to be a woman in the woods. I ended up in jail.
2. This is a story with no obvious beginning. Like a river of disputed origin. Let’s start in a hospital bed where a young woman has been watching blood clots work their way down a catheter tube. Which snakes between her own two legs. Let’s have her smoking a cigarette, which locates us in time. A time when you could smoke in hospitals. Let’s make it look awkward because she just started smoking today! The diagnosis is cancer, so, really, why not?
From his enlistment in the Navy at age 17, to his service with the Marines in the Korean war, to his time as Secretary of the Navy, to his five terms in the United States Senate, John Warner lived an extraordinary life of service and accomplishment.
I had the privilege of serving alongside John in the Senate for three decades. The John Warner I knew was guided by two things: his conscience and our Constitution. And, when acting in accordance with both, he neither wavered in his convictions nor was concerned with the consequences.
From fighting for international rules and norms to help keep the peace among nations, to his principled stances to oppose torture and support our Armed Forces and our national security, I always knew that John’s decisions were guided by his values even when we disagreed on the policy outcomes. When told that if he voted in a way that was not in line with his party’s position as he did numerous times on issues of rational gun policy, women’s rights, a