Ninety-five years ago today, August 26, 1920, women were granted the right to vote. By chance, we happened upon a statue of three women in Seneca Falls, NY. It represented Susan B. Anthony, Amelia Bloomer (dress reformer), and Elizabeth Cady Stanton meeting – shaking hands. Anthony and Stanton played leading roles in the cause of woman suffrage. If not for this meeting, the Nineteenth Amendment giving women the vote might not have passed. Anthony and Stanton were very instrumental in the women’s suffrage movement.

I thought it so coincidental that we saw it on the exact anniversary.

Along with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, I have one to two line clips from the lives of six other rural women I visited with today. They were all at wineries around the Finger Lakes in NY. I called them all Inez.

“I just finished school in CA and drove across the county to get home.”

“I only work here part time but my girls, six and nine, start school soon so I will be able to get more hours.”

“I am in my second year of vet school at Cornell University and I work here only part time – I have a lot of studying.

“I live about fifteen minutes from work and have been here since May.”

“I am studying communication at Ithica College but I really want to be a professor of religious studies.”

“I am a retired school teacher. This is my fun retirement job.”

Rural women are diverse, innovative, and do what they can to contribute. It has been so rewarding to consciously get brief stories each day of our long bike trip.