The Right to Vote was hard fought for Women!!

A year ago I started writing this blog and at the time wondered if I could keep writing every day. I have found the experience fun, frustrating and enjoyable. I thought I might run out of topics to write about, but many people send me ideas or topics or great posts, such as the following.

My brother sent me this today and I would like to acknowledge the original author Vicki Grealy for an inspiring reminder of  what woman went through to get the right to vote. Voting should never be taken for granted by either sex, we have too much to lose if we become apathetic.

In Canada Women only got the vote in 1918, which excluded women in Quebec until 1940.  It's important to remember who suffered so we could be free and equal members of our society.

....ladies, it is worth remembering and reflecting as we are able to head to the polls in one week.


WE, THE WOMEN OF THIS COUNTRY NEED TO GET OUT AND VOTE!!!!!!!!!  

This is the story of our Grandmothers and Great-Grandmothers who lived only 90 years ago. And by the end of the night, they were barely alive. Forty prison guards wielding clubs and their warden's blessing went on a rampage against the 33 women wrongly convicted of 'obstructing sidewalk traffic.'                Remember, it was not until 1920 that women were granted the right to go to the polls and vote.  The women were innocent and defenseless, but they were jailed nonetheless for picketing the White House, carrying signs asking for the vote.        (Lucy Burns)  They beat Lucy Burns, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air.  (Dora Lewis)  They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack. Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women.  Thus unfolded the 'Night of Terror' on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket Woodrow Wilson's White House for the right to vote. For weeks, the women's only water came from an open pail. Their food--all of it colorless slop--was infested with worms.        (Alice Paul)  When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press.  So, refresh my memory. Some women won't vote this year because - why, exactly? We have carpool duties? We have to get to work? Our vote doesn't matter? It's raining?             (Mrs. Pauline Adams in the prison garb she wore while serving a sixty-day sentence.)  Last week, I went to a sparsely attended screening of HBO's new movie 'Iron Jawed Angels.' It is a graphic depiction of the battle these women waged so that I could pull the curtain at the polling booth and have my say. I am ashamed to say I needed the reminder.        (Miss Edith Ainge, of Jamestown , New York )  All these years later, voter registration is still my passion. But the actual act of voting had become less personal for me, more rote. Frankly, voting often felt more like an obligation than a privilege. Sometimes it was inconvenient.    (Berthe Arnold, CSU graduate)  My friend Wendy, who is my age and studied women's history, saw the HBO movie, too. When she stopped by my desk to talk about it, she looked angry. She was--with herself. 'One thought kept coming back to me as I watched that movie,' she said. 'What would those women think of the way I use, or don't use, my right to vote? All of us take it for granted now, not just younger women, but those of us who did seek to learn.' The right to vote, she said, had become valuable to her 'all over again.'  HBO released the movie on video and DVD . I wish all history,  social studies and government teachers would include the movie in their curriculum I want it shown on Bunco night, too, and anywhere else women gather. I realize this isn't our usual idea of socializing, but we are not voting in the numbers that we should be, and I think a little shock therapy is in order.  (Conferring over ratification [of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution] at [National Woman's Party] headquarters, Jackson Pl [ace] [ Washington , D.C. ]. L-R Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, Mrs. Abby Scott Baker, Anita Pollitzer, Alice Paul, Florence Boeckel, Mabel Vernon (standing, right))  It is jarring to watch Woodrow Wilson and his cronies try to persuade a psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane so that she could be permanently institutionalized. And it is inspiring to watch the doctor refuse. Alice Paul was strong, he said, and brave. That didn't make her crazy.  The doctor admonished the men: 'Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity.'  Please, if you are so inclined, pass this on to all the women you know.  We need to get out and vote and use this right that was fought so hard for by these very courageous women. Whether you vote democratic, republican or independent party - remember to vote.  (Helena Hill Weed, Norwalk , Conn.)

Boomers aging well?

In one of the Blogs I read Boomers--A trip into the heart of the Boomers, the author Brent Green, talks about a speech he gave in Florida to a Boomer conference geared to business men and women who want to learn to market to us. I was struck by the following statements:

Individual men may feel powerless against external forces of unemployment, layoffs, downsizing and chronic diseases. But when a generation of men known to challenge authority confronts this evolving life-stage, transformative beliefs and actions can emerge. A generation of men that embraced feminism and racial inclusiveness can create new constructs for male aging, conceptions that are engaging, uplifting and liberating.


I agree with his assertion but I also suggest that this view should include the Boomer women; men accepted and embraced feminism, but the women were leaders because they lead the way for us men to follow. In these times of uncertainty that the writer above discuss, women as well as men feel powerless and women will live longer than us males, so they will need to construct new conceptions of aging, which we men will adapt to and embrace.

Brent Green, the author of the blog, goes on to say:  "Author Cogswell identifies Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 – 1900) as the “soul of existentialism,” a thinker who has influenced contemporary psychology, literature, spirituality, art and music. Nietzsche wrote that “society everywhere is a conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.” And it seems true today that millions of Boomer men, vital and engaged as many now are, must nevertheless consider how traditional habits in western society could conspire to strip them of their opportunities to thrive beyond 60 and into bonus years promised so many....As the great writers about existentialism would urge, Boomer men must not become standardized old men.

Society has advanced and women are engaged in every aspect of society, so the ideas that Nietzsche and others argued, need to be expanded to include women. Nietzsche is right, society forces are conspiring against the boomers, and I agree but would argue that it will be both men and women boomers, that will not allow society to strip us of the opportunity to thrive beyond 60. (I suspect it will be the women who will lead this battle, not the men). We will find a way not be become seniors and to remain boomers!