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BadassYou don't need a man to be successful
My grandmother was born just after the turn of the century. She grew up with no piped water, no electricity, and no cars. She grew up during the Great depression. She and her sister each had a school dress and a Sunday dress. They would share dresses so they weren't wearing the same thing every single day.
She got married to a man I believe she thought she loved. They eloped and her brothers found out through a newspaper article that listed all of the weddings in the county. They were going to go beat him up for lying about their sister. Needless to say it wasn't a lie.
As was the case with most women in that era, there was no birth control and she had four children. She didn't want more children; she was happy with two but my grandfather didn't have a son.
She was widowed in the 1960s with three children at home and my mom in college. At my grandfather's death she had never driven a car, never held a job outside the house, never had a bank account. All she had was a high school diploma. After his death, she went to work in the small hospital in her hometown and retired as their administrator. Never having remarried or even dated.
A lot of my friends don't understand why I looked up to her so much. She taught me that you didn't have to have a man and if you did you damned well better be able to take care of yourself in case things didn't work out.
In recent years and going through my uncle's estate, we have found that my grandfather was incredibly unfaithful and I have or rather had four additional uncles. I have to wonder how my grandmother dealt with that since all of them were in the same small town.
Men don't change. But women continually rise to meet the challenges of their lives and remake themselves again and again.
GG lived to be 105.
Interesting article.
The one next to it about the 8000 year old burial with a dog in it annoyed me. They always talk about “faithful hounds” with this sort of thing as if the dog chose it. Those poor animals were killed.
They always talk about “faithful hounds” with this sort of thing as if the dog chose it. Those poor animals were killed.
It's interesting isnt it? It wades into a man's sense of ownership - They use to call mastery of nature. The perceived belief that they do and in their own divine right "own" living things, such as dogs and animals. With that comes there "god given right" to kill & eat.
Though I cannot really argue when the sacrifice of animals and people appears to have been very prevalent throughout known history. Still, worth a ponder.
Not just men’s graves, either. There was a dig in England on a Time Team episode where a woman - Roman era, iirc - had a little dog buried with her.
Then of course there are all the poor horses in tombs.
That's a gruesome part of burial history; however, there is much evidence that throughout many eras of prehistory graves weren't closed-off units, but frequently reopened to include more burial offerings, rearrange the bones, take out older objects, or include new burials next to the original one. So there's a likelihood that not all animal companions were sacrificed specifically for the owner's deaths.
“Our modern society is like a blip in the timeline of human history,” said Chambers. “The truth is that human-dog relationships have not looked like they do in Western industrialized societies for most of human history, and looking at traditional societies can offer a wider vision.”
The findings showed that women’s involvement with dogs correlated with a rise in pet “personhood,” affording them advantages such as a given name, sleeping on furniture or being ceremoniously mourned at passing." 😢