Welcome to 55 and Better

Grandmother was a Suffragette...

   On January 18, 1892, at the age of 77, Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902) resigned as president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. She believed this farewell speech, which she delivered before the Judiciary Committees of the House and Senate, "the best thing I have ever written." Susan B. Anthony didn't like it much at first--it contained too little on the vote, which had become her central focus--but she later called it "the strongest and most unanswerable argument and appeal ever made by mortal pen or tongue for the full freedom and franchise of women." (Not for Ourselves Alone - Ward, Burns)

The Solitude of Self speech (excerpts)

...The isolation of every human soul, and the necessity of self-dependence, must give each individual the right to choose his own surroundings.
The strongest reason for giving woman all the opportunities for higher education, for the full development of her faculties, forces of mind and body; for giving her the most enlarged freedom of thought and action; a complete emancipation from all forms of bondage, of custom, dependence, superstition; from all the crippling influences of fear--is the solitude and personal responsibility of her own individual life. The strongest reason why we ask for woman a voice in the government under which she lives; in the religion she is asked to believe; equality in social life, where she is the chief factor; a place in the trades and professions, where she may earn her bread, is because of her birthright to self--sovereignty; because, as an individual, she must rely on herself. No matter how much women prefer to lean, to be protected and supported, nor how much men desire to have them to do so, they must make the voyage of life alone, and for safety in an emergency, they must know something of the laws of navigation. To guide our own craft, we must be captain, pilot, engineer; with chart and compass to stand at the wheel; to watch the winds and waves, and know when to take in the sail, and to read the signs in the firmament over all. It matters not whether the solitary voyager is man or woman; nature, having endowed them equally, leaves them to their own skill and judgment in the hour of danger, and, if not equal to the occasion, alike they perish.

   Elizabeth Cady Stanton put pen to paper and wrote volumes of course, but for now and to serve our purpose, we'll stick with the Solitude of Self script, wherein she addressed her words to the 'judicious' males of the Judiciary Committees. Stanton on "dotage":

Imagine when the pleasures of youth are passed, children grown up, married and gone, the hurry and bustle of life in a measure over, when the hands are weary of active service, when the old arm chair and the fireside are the chosen resorts, then men and women alike must fall back on their own resources. If they cannot find companionship in books, if they have no interest in the vital questions of the hour, no interest in watching the consummation of reforms with which they might have been identified, they soon pass into their dotage. The more fully the faculties of the mind are developed and kept in use, the longer the period of vigor and active interest in all around us continues. If, from a life-long participation in public affairs, a woman feels responsible for the laws regulating our system of education, the discipline of our jails and prisons, the sanitary condition of our private homes, public buildings and thoroughfares, an interest in commerce, finance, our foreign relations, in any or all these questions, her solitude will at least be respectable, and she will not be driven to gossip or scandal for entertainment.

Transcript: Stanton's Solitude of Self speech before the Judiciary Committees: http://www.lclark.edu/~ria/stanton.solitude.html
Elizabeth Cady Stanton 1815-1902 bio: http://www.nps.gov/archive/wori/ecs.htm

   And although sadly, Elizabeth Cady Stanton died in 1902, having never exercised the privilege, she had, along with the "Seneca Falls Circle", constituted the first wave in 1848: the Suffragettes. Praise goddesses, what they got up to...

...An amendment to the constitution that would allow women the vote was introduced forty-five times in Congress, before it finally passed and was sent to the states for ratification. There was resistance to overcome in every state. Women went to meeting, discussed the issue among themselves, met together in homes to organize. They formed delegations to speak to legislators. They demonstrated, marched and were arrested. Finally, after seventy years of effort, the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified. On November 2, 1920, American women finally were able to cast a ballot. Among them was Eleanor Roosevelt, who, at thirty-five voted for the first time.

(From Goddesses in Older Women - Jean Shinoda Bolen)

   And speaking of Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962), among the many achievements in her sunset years:
...After her husband's death in 1945, President Truman named her U.S. Delegate to the United Nations. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948, was largely her work, and the delegates rose in a standing ovation for her. [E.R. chaired the United Nations Commission on Human Rights at age 64] Eleanor Roosevelt continued to be active in politics and in work for international cooperation. At a memorial service, Adlai Stevenson said: "She would rather light candles than curse the darkness, and her glow warmed the world." (source: Womens' Hall of Fame)

For more on Eleanor Roosevelt: "First Lady of the World" bio: http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/erbio.html
The American Experience: Eleanor Roosevelt: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eleanor/

   So there you have but two of America's finest trail-blazers (senior women, making a difference), precursors to our current events, brought to you by 55 and Better...In celebration of Madame Speaker

Speaker Pelosi (Date of birth, Mar. 26, 1940)