GRANDMOTHER'S CHOICE, BLOCK 1

 

Here's my block 1 for Grandmother's Choice, the new BOW about women's rights.  I'm happy with the way it turned out and with my colors.  I did pull some more mediums today.

 

My Grandmother was a teenager when women gained the right to vote in the U.S.A.  When I was 44 'ish and 'back in college' (a late bloomer?) I took a class on Women's History in the U.S.A.  It was actually about women's rights in the U.S.A.  While studying sit-ins, protest marches, arrests, and hunger strikes - and forced feedings in jail - I asked her how she felt about all this at the time.

 

I was shocked that she found the women to be 'kooks'.  This grandmother worked for pay her whole life.  She was always modern for the times.  Cut her hair and wore flapper clothes when that was in.  Owned and ran a farm by herself after her husband died.  I thought she was quite modern.  Kooks???  She said yes, while she and her friends were all for women voting, they thought the extreme measures taken by the women's rights advocates were nuts.  And all the men thought the women would just cancel out their votes.  Geesh!  What a surprise.

 

As a child of the 60's, I grew up with protest marches, sit-ins, hunger strikes, and arrests.  Even the National Guard murdering students at Kent State.  Even assassinations of civil rights workers, and one of our beloved presidents.  I thought, "Good for them!"  I wouldn't have had that courage. 

 

But then I realized I thought the women's liberation movement movers and shakers seemed like kooks to me.  Bra burnings?  Unshaven hair on legs and underarms?  Leaving your kids in day-care (which I actually did for a few months).  But I'm all in favor of equal rights for women in the work place and society.  Hmmm..................  What comes around goes around?

 

I'm so proud that we've come so far.  Women are free to stay home with thier kids, or work outside the home.  They are free to do what works for them, their goals and dreams, their families' needs.

 

You can find a link to this BOW in my left sidebar and earlier posts.