Charlotte Painter

I’ve had this “dancers of the third age” poster for a long time. It reminds me of my maternal grandmother because it depicts older women in ballet poses. I’ve always found great wisdom in how she viewed aging and lived her life. After two husbands who died, she bucked societal expectations of her culture and time, and had a long-standing relationship with a younger man (he was in his late 50s!lol), would ride her bike all over town (until she died in her 90s), would wear all the “good stuff” because “you can’t take it with you,” and any given Wednesday was a good as any other day to use the good china and expensive perfume. She was a remarkable no-nonsense woman with a huge heart...a social worker without a degree!

I miss her greatly, and this book reminded me of her. These are more “refined” ladies (lol), but the premise is the same. Old age does not have to diminish our souls and with the freedom of “old age” also comes the opportunity to explore other interests or deepen the interests we have.

This book, “Gifts of Age” was a collaboration between Charlotte Painter and photographer Pamela Valois. It’s out of print. It contains short “glimpses” into the lives of 32 inspiring women to include Julia Childs and Joan Baez Senior.

It’s not inclusive of people of color or other cultures, but I still found reading about the lives of women born in the late 1800 and early 1900s,and how they adjusted to aging, interesting.… (mer)

Selected excerpts from private diaries of 37 women, known and unknown -- including Louisa May Alcott, Sophie Tolstoy, George Eliot, Anais Nin, in three Parts: Love, Work, and Power.

In the POWER category:

Frances Anne Kemble, the English author of the FIRST authoritative record of actual conditions on one of the "benevolent" slave plantations in America 1838.

Mary Boykin Chesnut, the childless wife of a Southern General, traveled during Civil War recording what people were, not just what they did. (She fought for the South but despised slavery and those white men who defended what she perfectly understood were their "harems".[276])

Carolina Maria De Jesus, born in the favela to illiterate sharecroppers, she became a diarist then a journalist. Her 1960 "Quarto de Despejo" sold more than any other Brazilian book in history. Had honorary Law degree, but died in poverty.

Sweden's Selma Lagerlof, first woman to win the Nobel for Literature.

Katherine Mansfield, short-story writer, New Zealand, died in 1923 (in Europe) age 34, mentions Anton Chekov and Gurdijieff in her diary.

Joanna Field, the English psychologist -- I think of her bringing scientific analysis to bear upon subjective feelings -- true perspective, one admitting the other, flowing and growing?

"We don't see things as they are; we see them as WE are."… (mer)