Armistice Day at Quilt Camp

Today is Armistice Day, which is also Veterans Day, which is also Remembrance Day.  I've spent this day with monks, once, long ago, before I was blogging.  Today I will spend this day with women quilters at Quilt Camp at Lutheridge.

Like my November 11 with the monks, spending this day with women quilters seems both strange and appropriate.  This day originally celebrated the day that the Armistice was signed that brought World War I, one of the bloodiest wars in human history, to a close. In so many ways, this event was the one that catapulted us all into the twentieth century. We got to see first-hand the ways that technology could be used for evil, as well as for good. We got to see damaged war veterans return, and we got reports that made many people question the idea that war builds character. And in a more positive spin, as so many men went off to war (and so many didn't come back), it opened up interesting doors for women into the world of work.

The entrance of women into the world of work would have far reaching ramifications far into the 20th century and our own time. The most obvious, of course, is that many women could earn their own money. Some you might see as more minor: for example, many women began wearing pants. You may not see that development as a big deal, but I could argue that it was. Wearing pants gave women freedom in a way that few other clothing developments have.

During World War I, many women began driving for the first time, because so many men were gone.  Here is one of my favorite pictures of one of those earliest women drivers (from Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar's No Man's Land: Volume 2: Sex Changes, p. 297) :

Would this development, and many others, have happened without World War I? Probably. But World War I accelerated the emancipation of women.

I don't want to underestimate the terrible price, especially for Europeans. I've been to the World War I cemeteries in France, and it's sobering, those fields of white crosses and the knowledge that it's a small percentage of the dead.

The women with whom I will spend time today are at mid-life and older.  We have veterans in our lives, older relatives and people our age and some of us know veterans from the generations that have come after us.  Some of us have made quilts for veterans groups.  Even though we are at a Lutheran church camp, we come from a variety of faith traditions--happily, no one will object to prayers for peace, healing, restoration, the kinds of prayers that might cause offense at more secular spots.