Older Woman Dies from Shoveling Snow

We’ve passed through a much snowier than usual winter in my part of the country. How much more? So much more that shoveling away yesterday’s half-foot led to the fatal heart attack of a 60-year-old woman. (link) Those who celebrate Equal Occupational Fatality Day know that workplace deaths of men outnumber those of women by more than 12-to-1, as they should. I wonder if fatal heart attacks suffered by snow-shoveling woman are even more rare. I’d never heard of one before, while such fatalities for men are proverbial. I would be feeling pretty lousy about myself and my sons if that woman had died on our street.

In other Maryland snow action of a related nature, there’s this AP story from Annapolis:
“Police say a woman reported to be in labor and her boyfriend were robbed in Annapolis as they headed to a hospital.
“The couple was confronted by three men with guns as they left an apartment on Copeland Street early Sunday. When the woman’s boyfriend fled, police spokeswoman Cpl. Amy Miguez says, the suspects tried to get the woman to let them into an apartment, but she didn’t have a key.”

Some might say it takes a lot of courage to reject sexist culture and genetic imperatives, and instead flee and leave the mother of your soon-to-be born child in the hands of armed criminals. Sane people would have other thoughts, many of them disparaging. Or maybe he wasn’t the father and was a simple coward rather than a traitor to mankind.