Photographic images posted to 
Designer scarves and shawls added to 
Lovely buck from summer litters that carries chocolate gene for sale.
Dyeing, Dyeing, Dyeing!
Spinning a hand carded blend of my fawn angora, moorit wool and tussah silk on my Reeves Wheel
Posted in Other Stuff
|
Cousin with Grandmother I've been working on an article about my grandmother. She was born in a little community near here and lived seventy-eight years, mostly within 10 miles of her birthplace. She saw astonishing changes in her lifetime, watching an area change from a subsistence based farming economy to one that depended on outside sources and factories. One of the greatest changes was the disappearance of the once thriving community where she grew up. Rock Castle, where she lived as a child, was affected by the chestnut blight that swept the Appalachians during the early years of her life, the choice of a different path for a major road just as cars were becoming common and the decision of the National Park Service to buy out the small farmers that remained in the area and displaced them. My grandmother was a very intelligent and ambitious young woman. She worked hard to get an education in a time when it wasn't easy. None of her older siblings finished what was then available as high school, although they all did well in life because of native intelligence and their good work ethics. My grandmother attended the local schools as far as they could educate her, then boarded with a family near the "high school", riding a horse over on Sunday evening and returning home on Friday. She talked of riding through snow so deep she couldn't tell where the roads were, trusting old Molly to find the way over the fields. Sometimes the fences were buried and she rode right over them. The high school only went to the eleventh grade, but she learned Latin and other advanced courses, readying herself for college. It was then that my grandmother learned the hard way about the lack of control that women had over their lives at that time. Her father was an intelligent man as well, but a product of his times, and he refused to allow my grandmother to go to the two year college that was only a county away. Without his permission, as a young woman in a world controlled by men, she could only settle into family life. She married and made a life for herself as a mother and homemaker, but there was always that knowledge that she could have done more for herself. In just a few short years attitudes changed; education became much easer to obtain and my grandmother's younger sister became a nurse. The fact that her daughters, and granddaughter, were able to do what she couldn't was very satisfying to my grandmother. She had seen a time when women were trapped by their lack of education and skills in abusive marriages, while even good men often made poor economic choices that created hardship for their families. She taught us in subtle ways that education and independence were valuable, and I treasure her memory for these lessons and for her other wonderful qualities. |
Comments
|
|
|
|
|
Posted by
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted by
|
|
|
|
|
Posted by
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted by