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Miscellaneous

    Snow, while beautiful, can be expensive when in excess. You either pay someone else to clear the driveway and parking spaces out front, and to shovel your walkways, or you spend a lot on gas and repair on very expensive equipment. Then the trees break off. Some trees will be totally removed this spring. Some have already been cut up. More big branches need to be cut and removed once the yard drives up and the trucks won't tear up ruts in the lawn. Our budget will be hit by at least $3000! And it's not a large yard.

    We've shoveled snow and ice since before Christmas. We're still chipping ice out of the gutters, and off the patios, and are clearing a wider path in the driveway. When it really starts to melt, or if we have another hard rain, the neighborhood's going to be flooded again, and the downstairs furniture and rugs will have to go up as fast as we can grab them.

    It's been beautiful, but it's had a price.

    On another note, today begins Women's History Month. In a culture that still seems to objectify women and to discriminate against them, it is refreshing to pause and remember the role that women have played in history.

    I read an article today about Hungarian women who ran boarding houses in Cleveland. This was an important industry there and enabled many workers to leave the farms and take factory jobs, or other city jobs. They provided shelter, all meals, and clean clothes and mending. Monday was laundry day, so Monday night, these women did not sleep, in order to avoid getting behind on the rest of the week's work.

    A lot of women were farmers. They either worked alongside their husbands, in addition to child-rearing and household duties, or they inherited all the work when the men died in war or from disease. My widowed great aunt, who died before I was born, ran a 500 acre dairy farm by herself. Land was cheap, not a true asset. Hiring outsiders was not an option to most country folk. So she did what she could to take care of her own needs, and to sell cream to the dairy in town before refrigeration was available.

    Unfortunately, these roles were ignored because they were filled by mere women. In fact, if you trace your family tree, you will not be able to find the family name of your grandmothers, and sometimes not even the first name. Women have been so ignored and considered so unimportant, yet they contributed as much to our DNA as our grandfathers, and as much to history.