This essay was e-mailed to me today by a friend. I edited it a little for length, my apologies to the author.
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How Women Got To Vote (by Kathy Acuff)

A short history lesson on the privilege of voting...

The women were innocent and defenseless. And by the end of the night, they were barely alive. Forty prison guards wielding clubs and their warden's blessing went on a rampage against the 33 women wrongly convicted of "obstructing sidewalk traffic."

They beat Lucy Burn, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air. They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack. Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women.

Thus unfolded the "Night of Terror" on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket Woodrow Wilson's White House for the right to vote.

For weeks, the women's only water came from an open pail. Their food--all of it colorless slop--was infested with worms. When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press.

So, refresh my memory. Some women won't vote this year because--why, exactly? We have carpool duties? We have to get to work? Our vote doesn't matter? It's raining?

Last week, I went to a sparsely attended screening of HBO's new movie "Iron Jawed Angels." It is a graphic depiction of the battle these women waged so that I could pull the curtain at the polling booth and have my say. I am ashamed to say I needed the reminder.

It is jarring to watch Woodrow Wilson and his cronies try to persuade a psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane so that she could be permanently institutionalized. And it is inspiring to watch the doctor refuse.

Alice Paul was strong, he said, and brave. That didn't make her crazy. The doctor admonished the men: "Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity."
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OK ladies--get out there and vote. And I might even forgive you for being a Republican, as long as you don't rub it in if Dubbya "wins" again.

Why, oh why, must cats express their discontent by peeing?

The same Husband who did not want a dog, who made it clear that the dog would be entirely my responsibility and had a detailed list of annoying habits the dog simply MUST NOT HAVE, spent the night on a mattress on the floor next to the dog's bed, so that Roger would not be so lonely.

Got Me a Dog

It's 7:50 pm, and all the Quistiltons (save myself) are asleep--including the newest Quistilton, Roger. Roger weighs about 50 pounds, is black and tan, short-haired, and kinda smelly. (Ah, yet another hapless being to blame the family gaseous emissions on.) We are thinking German Shepard-Random Hound mix. I'm trying to post a picture of him, but since I have the web abilities of a sea sponge, I can't figure out how. Tell ya what, do a google search for "tompkins county spca," go to their home page, click on "dogs" and scroll down. He'll be on the site for a few more days, taunting others with his cuteness, though they CANNOT HAVE HIM.

Charles, the non sea sponge, has figured out how to post a new picture of Roger. He'll sit on the home page of quistilton.com for a bit.