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Red dis Chords of Dagger and Light
The high fire of bright crimson pyres
Breathes life into the eyes of onlooking criers

Her hair but not eyes
Set a blaze the night skies

Like two piercing arrows on spears of death
She strolls through my mind with powerful breadth

Tis the command she doth carry about
Through her eyes do I follow with narry a doubt
Kill me with insatiable clout
Unloved but not lonely and only with route

Tis my lot in life to serve to this end
She has my unswerving devotion and captured amends

Let me march as her soldier to inspiring aw
Let the land of men discover new laws

Tis the law of love and command she doth hold
Over men both young and old

Never a day goes by without thought
That I might not have seen her if the eyes weren't caught

Those were my eyes she took instantaneously
Without my permission she bent my will free

And all through the ecstatic scarlet hair which first blinded my sight
Before coming around to her daggers of light

~written by Consis

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(SENECA FALLS, New York) Inspired by Alan Shepard, the first American to journey into space, a 14-year-old from suburban Chicago wrote a letter to NASA in 1961 asking what she needed to do to become an astronaut.

~She got a curt reply: Girls are not being recruited by the nation's space program.

"It had never crossed my mind up until that point that there might be doors closed to me simply because I was a girl," recalled the letter writer, better known today as Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, as she was enshrined Saturday in the National Women's Hall of Fame, along with nine other inductees.

Honored with her were Maya Lin, who designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.; Dr. Rita Rossi Colwell, who became the first female director of the National Science Foundation in 1998; and Betty Bumpers, a crusader for childhood immunizations who was Clinton's predecessor as Arkansas' first lady.

"I don't think there has ever been a better time to be a woman than in the United States of America in the 21st century," Clinton said in an interview.

The first known women's rights convention was held in 1848 in this upstate New York village. The hall, which opened in 1969, acclaims women who have made valuable contributions to society and especially to the freedom of women. In all, 217 women have been chosen by a national committee of judges.

Six women honored posthumously this year included pilot Blanche Stuart Scott, a barnstormer in the early days of aviation; Ruth Fulton Benedict, an anthropologist whose 1934 book, "Patterns of Culture," became an American classic; and Florence Ellinwood Allen, who in 1934 became the first female judge appointed by a president to a U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

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Roses Are RedAnd So Am I

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The nightmares didn't start until months after Alicia Flores returned home. The images were stark and disturbing: In one dream, a dying Iraqi man desperately grabbed her arm. In another, she was lost in a blinding sandstorm.

Sometimes, Flores awakened to discover her mouth was dust-dry -- as if she were really stumbling through the scorching, 120-degree desert.

The nightmares bring Flores back to Iraq, and her service in the Army's 92nd Chemical Company. She was just 19 when her unit arrived there. Now 23, she's left with memories of women and children being killed, of hauling bodies, of shooting a teenage Iraqi fighter. "It was him or me," she says.

"I'm fine with what I did over there ...," Flores says. "In my eyes, I did a good thing. It really doesn't bother me. The only thing that bothers me is I just want to sleep more."

Flores is one of a new generation of women who have returned from war to cope with emotional stress or physical wounds that linger long after the sounds of mortar and gunfire have faded.

Studies of Vietnam and Gulf War veterans have documented post-traumatic stress in females -- with higher rates than men, in some cases.

But the war in Iraq and Afghanistan has seen a far larger deployment of women -- more than 155,000 -- with far more females exposed to ambushes, roadside bombs, rocket-propelled grenades and other deadly hazards. And they have been left with an increased risk of combat-like stress.

Flores says she's not alarmed by her diagnosis of post-traumatic stress; she's getting help for her sleeping problems. It wasn't the war, but the adjustment to the civilian world that she found difficult.

"It was OK -- now what?" she says. "You have nobody to talk to. Your family can't relate to what you and your soldiers had and it's just really hard. ... I felt lost. ... I didn't know what to do with my time."

That anxiety -- along with depression, irritability and feelings of isolation -- also are common symptoms for men with post-traumatic stress, but some mental health experts believe there are distinct pressures for women veterans.

Some come from military service itself -- where some women feel they need to prove themselves -- while others come from the transition from vigilant soldier to caring wife or mother.

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Roses Are RedAnd So Am I