100 Years of Girl Scouts

I'm celebrating today!  Why?  Girl Scouts is celebrating their 100th Birthday!

I was a Girl Scout from Brownies, all the way up to my early adult years.  I was in Girl Scouts on both the East & West coasts, in two states, and three towns.

With my troops, I've crafted, sang more songs that I can count, hiked, participated in community and environmental service projects, learned new skills, and camped.  Camping was a blast and definitely a staple to punctuate every year of Girl Scouting. I've slept on mountains, in tents, on hills, in cabins, in more tents, and even in a big barn.

It was in my last two troops that I took on the camp name Gizmo and still respond to that name today.  Quite honestly, I think my best friend, who was also a Girl Scout, calls me Giz or Gizie more than she calls me Karen!

And I've met some of the most wonderful girls, now women, in my life through Girl Scouts, including my Four Musketeers.  In Gravity, or Instinct, I Just Knew, I shared my first meeting with Snoopy...at her first Girl Scout meeting.  And I'm grateful that thanks to emails & Facebook, I'm able to continue to keep in contact with so many of the women to this day, twenty years later!

So what are Girl Scouts up to today?  Check out http://www.togetherthere.org/ to find out!

Happy 100th Birthday,
Girl Scouts!!!

Who will tell your story?

This post was inspired by the book Cleopatra: A Life where author, Stacy Schiff digs into the history books to share with us who the true Cleopatra was.

I'm a new contributor for the book club From Left to Write and you can read other members posts inspired by this same book on book club day, September 27 at From Left to Write.


Oprah says we all have a story.  And since you're here, living and breathing...  You are living, right?  You are breathing, right?  I haven't heard of any recent zombie attacks, so I think it's safe to assume that you are, at a minimum, living and breathing as you read this.

Back to Oprah and that story she says we all have.  What do you think?  I think we do.  Sometimes it can easily get buried under the mundane and sometimes it lives amidst fireworks blazing through the sky.  But, it's there.  Do you see it?

I didn't, for a long time.  But, I'm beginning to.  I know I have a gasping tale to tell in regards to the near fatal car accident I was in fifteen years ago.  But, that's not really my story, just a tale woven within it; one, that altered my story, but does not comprise it in its entirety.

Your story starts from the day you are born.  Each event, each simple day, every soul you encounter shapes the next curve, bump, plateau, or hill you journey through.  Mere moments effect the kind of glasses you see your world through.

This journey, this adventure, this life, your life is a story; it's your story.  Do you document it?  Do you write it down?  Do you scrapbook it?  Capture it on fabric, through the stitches of a quilt?  Color it through the pages of an art journal?  Snap both the precious and simple snippets of time with your camera?

If you aren't documenting your own story, who will?

Remember the childhood game of Telephone?  When the first person whispered 'something' in the ear next to them and as it was passed down the line through all the others, it became altered by each person passing it on.  And when the last person repeated that 'something' aloud, it was almost always different than what the first person had originally said.  It's the same thing with your personal tale, filled with thousands of 'somethings'.

Your tale is unique.  You have something wonderful to share, that only you can.  If others are left to tell of your journey, it can only include the Who, What, Where, and When.  Sure, it can infer the Why, but you can offer so much more to that story, to your story.

So, write it down, blog it, scrapbook it, stitch it to textiles, paint it, journal it, capture it with a click, click, click.  It's your tale to tell.

And do it soon, do it often, do it before those zombies attack!


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I personally purchased Cleopatra: A Life for my library. The book links are affiliate links.

Women who { Inspire } ~ SITS Day Four

Women who inspire us.

A woman who inspires us.

A woman who inspires me.

That's what SITS gals are sharing for day four of the Back 2 Blogging event going on this week.

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Initially, I thought of the present...

...and some of the women who inspire me creatively (including Dana of Paper Daydream & Elise of Mamacow Creations).

...and women who inspire me personally through over twenty years of Four Musketeer friendship.

As I kept thinking about the subject of women who inspire us, I reached into my history.  Actually, I reached into all of our history and arrived on the doorstep, quite literally, of a woman who has inspired me since childhood and was inspiring women long before that.

We share a birthday, this woman and I...though many years apart.  I remember meeting her in books as a child and learning of her strength, her fight, and determination to make this world a better and more equal place for women, for all humanity.

                       



Susan B. Anthony was an abolitionist, educational reformer, labor activist, temperance worker, suffragist, and women's rights campaigner.  I highly recommend (when you are done reading here, of course! :>) clicking on her name to learn more about her.  

Those were all her titles, for all the different peoples she fought for.  But, to me, she was was someone who didn't take 'no' for an answer....at least, not when it came to treating people fairly, equally.  As a woman, I owe her (and many other women, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton) my right to vote in this country...my right to have my voice count. 

I can't help but wonder, without the rights that Susan B. Anthony fought for, would so many of us women be blogging today?  Would I?  Could I?

                  

For a time, as a kidlet, I lived near Susan B. Anthony's old stomping grounds, in upstate New York.  And I remember a classmate's birthday party that I went to at her house.  All these years later and I still remember the sort of reverence that a room full of young girls showed while 'partying' there, learning, and celebrating our growth.

One hundred ninety years since her birth, one hundred four years since her death, and she still inspires.

Who inspires you?

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Thanks to Standards of Excellence, Westar Kitchen and Bath, and Florida Builder Appliances for sponsoring SITS Back 2 Blogging! 

 
Prompt #2:Describe a woman who inspired YOU.